


Practical Villainy

by Like_a_Hurricane



Series: Tricks of the Trade [4]
Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Holy crap is this a plot now, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-05
Updated: 2012-06-16
Packaged: 2017-11-06 22:57:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 31,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/424181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Like_a_Hurricane/pseuds/Like_a_Hurricane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>More in the Tricks of the Trade series. Plans and machinations are in motion, and the Avengers are a bit conflicted about Loki cooking breakfast in their kitchen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Delayed due to A-Kon. That over, I seem to have accidentally stumbled upon a real plot or something maybe kinda.

“Nat, this isn’t funny.”

“I’m sorry, Clint, but you’ll have to wait for the briefing like everyone else,” Natasha sighed. “Or you could start getting in on the spy-business side of things. Your choice.” She arched an eyebrow at him.

The archer’s frown deepened. “We agreed that the concerns of the Avengers would be held above those of our S.H.I.E.L.D. missions.”

“Yes, but this isn’t Avengers business yet; it’s Tony Stark’s personal life,” the assassin countered.

“The clean-up of that building collapse was awful thorough for things to be _just a personal matter_ , and Stark has been acting different since then: weird even by _his_ standards, and his brain is like––like a bag of cats!”

“Don’t steal my similes,” Bruce cut in, looking mildly uncomfortable.

Natasha looked inappropriately amused at that, her mask sharp and bright and infuriating as she liked to keep it when provoking someone into throwing a punch. “Very astute of you, there, Clint.” _More so than you know_.

“Barton, Romanov, sit down,” Steve cut in, his voice commandingly steely, but still earnest enough to sound exasperated around the edges. “This is supposed to be a constructive meeting, addressing _legitimate_ concerns.”

“I think it’s legitimately concerning how much we _don’t_ know about what happened on that last mission,” Clint cut in, voice low and mutinous. “Something is off, here.”

“You’re just irritated that Tony managed to knock you out in your last sparring session,” Natasha sighed.

“He wasn’t that strong before.” The archer’s eyes narrowed. “He was toying with me, pulling his punches until I pissed him off enough. You remember, Cap, how he threw you across the room last month?”

Steve frowned at him. “A month and a half ago. Clint, that was clearly-”

“I can’t do that, and I’ve had years more physical training than Tony goddamn Stark. Has he been mucking about with any new biochemistry that you know of, Bruce?”

“No, it’s not really his field of interest, except where keeping himself alive is concerned: most notably how to avoid any future metal poisoning,” Bruce replied coolly. “He still can’t stand the smell of burnt Palladium, from what I understand. A couple of weeks ago, he consulted me not long ago to run some tests on his blood for any abnormalities that might be caused by the chemicals, radiation levels, and other environmental factors he’s exposed to daily. I’m still working on it.”

Natasha sighed. “Fine. Fine. He’s been–– _given_ a gift, I guess, is the way to put it. Fury hasn’t wanted to discuss it with us because he suspects we know more than we’re letting on, and because I think he wants to see how your tests go, Bruce, since Tony wouldn’t let S.H.I.E.L.D. take any samples.”

“A _gift_ ,” Clint repeated in flat, disbelieving tones. “From who?”

“Whom,” Steve corrected quietly.

The assassin ran a hand through her hair, avoiding all eyes but Bruce’s. She raised her eyebrows at him. He paled visibly.

“No,” Bruce rasped. “They couldn’t possibly-”

“What? Who couldn’t?”

“Stop, I get the sinking feeling that I’ve worked it out,” Steve said sharply, and silence fell if only for a few seconds. “Where did the tesseract come from again, Clint? Think about it.”

“From Thor’s dad,” the archer replied slowly.

“And what two representatives from that same general region of the universe have been capable of surviving things that would kill most people, _and_ capable of easily flinging me across a room?” Steve asked, pinching the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger.

“I don’t like where this is going,” Clint said quietly. “He’s not having an affair with Thor is he? That can’t be what he meant about missing this little meeting because of Norse gods and their leather fetishes.”

“That’s what he told you?” Natasha sputtered, trying visibly not to laugh.

“I don’t like you keeping all these secrets any more than Clint does, Natasha,” said the man out of time in low, dangerous tones. “I know I’m out of touch with a number of modern ideas, but I did know Stark’s father. There are aspects of his son’s... _reputation_ that aren’t of any surprise to me. Norse gods would’ve been a new one even for Howard, though.”

“Singular, not plural,” Natasha corrected idly. “Dr. Foster incidentally doesn’t strike me as a woman inclined to share.”

Bruce cleared his throat. “This does explain that particular lab incident.”

“You _knew_?!” Clint all but squeaked.

“Hard to miss. That was one of the main reasons I moved most of my equipment out of the shared laboratory space,” Bruce muttered.

“Now that I didn’t need to know,” Steve said, sounding uneasy.

“We all knew about his business deal with Asgard,” Natasha said simply. “We all knew it was Loki, not Thor, who brokered it. Fury briefed all of us on that entire debacle a few months ago.”

“I still can’t believe he agreed to _work_ with that fucker,” the archer muttered, “but I suppose if they were going at it like rabbits, it makes a little more sense from a crazed Tony Stark perspective.”

“If not for Loki, Tony would be dead,” Natasha said sharply, her voice cool and disconcertingly business-like as it was when she discussed techniques for getting rid of bodies, or when she identified other assassins by the scatter-pattern of a few bullet holes in a wall and spoke of them like old friends. “That building collapse had him nearly impaled on a steel girder, with his own armor cracking his ribs, as far as we could tell. Now, Tony Stark has never trusted me, but he’s still let me into his home, along with the rest of us, because he’s just the sort of madman the Avengers have always needed to keep a few steps ahead of whatever threat is after us at any given time.” She was glaring straight into Clint’s eyes now, her expression not-quite-gentle, and cold as winter in Siberia. “I personally don’t care who or what he sleeps with. So far as I can tell, he’s managed to persuade the madman who brought about the Avengers in the first place––because he was too much, too powerful, and too damn clever at messing with everyone’s heads for anyone else to handle him––into thinking that the universe is more interesting with earth, and us on it, as we all are, than without. I’m fine with that.”

A long pause followed, all eyes on Black Widow, who kept hers fixed on the only man she had considered a true friend to her, and someone she could trust to see the occasional human facets of herself, before the Avengers.

Clint Barton swallowed thickly, his expression going a bit distant. “And if it’s Loki being the _God of Lies_ again?”

“He doesn’t have Stark under his control,” she said quietly. “We all know what that looks like now, and we know that Loki is too impatient, with too much ego, to have kept that sort of thing quiet for so long. Tony also winds up concussed every other mission; we know that would’ve snapped him out of it, so it seems odd that he wouldn’t have mentioned anything about it so far.”

“You can’t possibly trust _Loki_ ,” Steve all but whispered.

“I don’t,” Natasha agreed. “No more so than Stark ever trusted me, in the beginning, especially once he knew for a fact that I was from S.H.I.E.L.D., and therefore a spy sent to keep an eye on him. Loki is worse than I ever was, though: more dangerous, and more cunning, but he’s occupied with someone he considers far more important to defeat than us. Thor confirmed with me privately that Loki and Odin have both been working on it, and we know how little trust there has ever been between father and son, there. If anyone could see through all of Loki’s tricks, I’d presume it would be the gallows-god of knowledge and wisdom who raised him, and who now knows what his adopted son has turned into.”

“Where does Tony fall in that picture?” Steve asked.

Natasha shrugged casually. “Loki stole mythical golden apples from Asgard to make him immortal, and now has taken him to Asgard, presumably to celebrate the end of his parole. What do _you_ think?”

Bruce made a disconcerted noise. Clint looked a bit shell-shocked. Steve appeared at once bemused and a bit thoughtful.

Their captain broke the silence first, “You think Loki cares for him? Sincerely?”

“I think he finds Tony more interesting than the rest of our planet, and that the pair of them are involved in something serious and dangerous that’s no real business of ours until Tony tells us otherwise,” Natasha concluded. “I trust _Tony_ at least that far.”

“Clint?” Bruce said lightly.

“Hm?” the archer managed, only half-thawed from the shock that had frozen his thought processes in their tracks.

“I apologize. Your use of my simile seems to be entirely merited.”

“Apology accepted,” the archer replied, voice rasping only slightly.

“So wait. Tony went to Asgard?” Steve inquired.

“I’m presuming so. Before his most recent trip, the last security footage of him showed him wearing armor a bit similar to Thor’s or Loki’s: no helmet, though,” Natasha said, with a shrug. “Also, the remote lab he’s been using for production of that element of his for Asgard was gutted and abandoned after all our eyes on the area went out for an hour just last night, so Loki’s contract is clearly up.”

“Which means he’ll be free to roam as he pleases, now,” Steve muttered. “I don’t recall many other war criminals as bad as him, captured and brought to trial, who got off quite so easy as that. He lost what, two years? And he’s immortal?”

“We haven’t got the diplomatic footing, or the necessary force to contain or kill him, Cap,” Natasha reminded. “And it’s clear that monster or no, Asgard needs him, and has uses for him.” She glanced briefly at Clint. “Pardon me for understanding that so well as I do.”

Looking a bit abashed, Steve dropped her gaze and sighed. “I––do suppose you’re right, there. It can’t be helped.”

A hush fell over them as Natasha met each of their gazes, and only Bruce didn’t falter or look away, but instead exchanged a shared and bitter little smile with her. He knew all about being a useful sort of monster, too, these days.

“Meeting adjourned?” the sometimes-Hulk suggested lightly.

“Yes. I think this has been––thought-provoking, to say the least,” Steve concurred.

“Traumatizing,” the archer suggested. “I think ‘traumatizing’ is the word you’re looking for. Chalk this up under the already long, _long_ list of things I didn’t need to know about Tony Stark’s love life.”

“Agreed,” the rest of them said in near-unison, though Natasha said it with more of a half-joking smile than did the other two Avengers.

 

~~

 

The sons of Muspelheim were giants of fire: all light and heat and that which melts away impurities and falsehoods, just as well as it burns forests to the ground. Tricks of the light––those simplest and often most detailed illusions––tended to be seen right through by them, like so much haze. It took true skill to fool them with disguise. Even natural shape-shifters ran the risk of being seen through, when exposed to so much bright light, sweating under so much heat.

Or, as a certain trickster had once learned the hard way some centuries before, _failing_ to sweat in the heat. He would not make that mistake again.

Deep beneath the surface of the earth, in a large chamber full of smoke and haze like the air of Muspelheim, there waited a giant. The chamber was settled where the cold of the underside of earth’s crust changed back into warmth, due to the close proximity of molten rock underfoot: too far to be of comfort to one of Muspelheim’s most powerful sons.

The chamber was wide and dark, cathedral-like and prone to echos. The slightest movement of his chains could start a rustling hiss of sound that would not stop for hours, but for now it was quiet enough for the prisoner to close his ember-like eyes and listen to the weak heartbeat of this small, and blandly temperate little world.

The air stirred with a whisper and a dull crack, on the far side of his chamber, where there lay a platform, and a set of stone stairs leftover from the ruined temple Odin had captured him in, before dragging the fire-giant to this empty earthen womb in a shower of heavy masonry. The son of Muspelheim had taken all the temple apart, brick by brick, over the past century or two; although he had left the altar, and the wide stone staircase, if only because his chains were too short for him to reach them, and they could not be burnt away.

Before that sound, with its curious lack of echo, the only light in the room had been from the craggy markings on the prisoner’s skin, and the brighter light of his eyes. Now, another light appeared, pale and cool as only light from sunlit worlds could be. The prisoner growled low, and the sound seemed to set the very stones a-quiver.

Through the rumbling sound came a lighter, sharper sound: the click of boot-heels, making their way down the stairs. The footsteps were decidedly not those of Odin. The giant, easily thrice times the size of any Aesir, fell quiet, and the air in the room around him heated further. He did not move until those small, surprisingly graceful footfalls came to a halt at the base of the stairs. Then came more smoke, and the rattling of chains. The echoing clatter of metal and stone falsely suggested the sound of a retreat. Now close to the stairs, leaning near as he could, without being detected, to the daring little Asgardian who had brought cool light into his cage.

She was tall for a lady of Midgard, less so for one of Asgard, with tawny hair and bright sea-green eyes. The light she brought seemed to have no particular point of origin, so that it seemed as though the air itself around her was aglow. “Good evening to you, Surtur, fallen hero of Muspelheim’s sons,” she called, in a low and moderately amused voice.

Then the giant had her: knew her name and a few tales he’d heard of her. “You must be Amora of Asgard,” he said, in a voice that sounded like cavern and stone and volcanic grumbling. “I recall hearing some few tales of you, when you were far younger.”

Amora swallowed hard, able to feel the vibration of that voice rattle through her flesh and bones, but when she caught sight of his bright-burning eyes amidst the haze and the smoke, her gaze remained stubbornly fixed on his. “And you are the last great old myth from Muspelheim, from the days when giants of that world could still resemble walking suns,” she countered. “I have heard tales of you from times before you were a relic from a bygone age of ceaseless warfare between and throughout the nine realms.”

“You speak boldly for such a small creature. Only Odin the All-Father himself could keep you truly safe in my company,” he countered, increasing the heat in the room until he could feel the resistant pocket of cooler air around the enchantress begin to falter, if only a little. “And even then, just barely.”

Despite her shield of cooling light, Amora began to sweat, though she ignored it. “I am hardly a subject of his, these days,” she said, with the slightest suggestion of a pout. “Not since my banishment, in any case.”

Curious now, the fire-giant stepped still a little nearer, the sharp lines of his face visible to the lady dressed in armor of white and palest green. “I will hear you, but make your point quickly, before I change my mind.” The heat abated, if only a fraction, making the markings on his skin glow just a little brighter, like burning coals in a sudden breeze, as he re-absorbed some energy from it.

The lady carried no staff, needing little more than her hands to weave what she needed to out of the air: an image of blue and burning light, forming a perfect cube. “I don’t suppose you recognize this little gem?” Her smile was one of childish mirth, and careless spite that had been centuries in the making.

“One of Odin’s toys, one he pulled power from to trap me here,” the giant said.

“It’s been in Midgard for some time now,” she mused.

“You are not the first to promise me this treasure before you even have it, but you have the least to gain from me.” He chuckled: a stomach-dropping burst of sound that could leave the unwary feeling winded. “My powers are of little use to one such as you.”

“With your might in chains, perhaps,” she purred, smiling wide, white teeth gleaming from within her little oasis of cold, ethereal light. “However, _I_ hardly need the tesseract to free you of those.” She dipped two fingers briefly under her chest plate, apparently between her breasts, and pulled out an unassuming disc of silvery metal. With a snapping, leftward flick of her wrist, the metal escaped her light, and began to change. It unfolded like a map, then arranged itself into dagger-like key with the grip curled like serpents-coils around her fingers, close to the knuckles.

The giant leapt forward with a roar that felt like an earthquake, followed by a single sharp, pure and almost twanging metallic note as his chains were abruptly pulled taught like violin-strings. With his hand, fully outstretched, the key the sorceress held was still just two foot-lengths from his grasp. Amora smiled, serene and utterly unmoving in the face of his display.

“You mock me, daughter of Asgard,” he snarled.

“We all do. It’s how people treat villains in cages: do trust me, I know,” she countered, her voice low and sultry now. “I have for you, Surtur son of Muspelheim, an offer. I do no favors without compensation, in transactions such as this.” She let the key dangle loosely in her hand, as though about to drop it, and smiled to note that the giant could not look away from it for several seconds.

When at last he did, gaunt and burning in his smoke-filled cage, he rasped, “Name your price.”

Amora the Enchantress just smiled. “There is a war coming, and a vast army from far outside the nine realms. The army will come to this little world, and Asgard is to meet them, including Odin and his _toys_ ,” she purred, pulling the key in close and whispering to it, until it again folded into a heavy disk just smaller than her palm. “They want the tesseract, and the whole negotiation process will doubtlessly require delicate handling, lest these interlopers decide to burn down all of Midgard, which the All-Father has always been irrationally averse to, for some reason.”

The giant watched with scarcely-restrained longing as the slipped the key back into its safe place between her breasts and beneath the over-formal armor covering them. “You wish to provoke a war.”

“Oh yes. So I would love it if you would tear apart that first wave of their army for me: burn and rend them for me,” she commanded, her voice full of heat and hatred and promise. “I will follow in your wake, and be sure that Asgard takes the blame. We both reap the benefit of making the All-Father miserable, and caught off his guard. I can thus offer you your chance for freedom, when the time comes. I can release you, but only when the time is right, and if you give me your word that you will do these favors for me in return.”

Slowly, the fire-giant began to smile. His teeth shone like daggers, gums and tongue glowing deep red like irons fresh from a blacksmith’s fire. “It would be my pleasure, m’lady. You have my word.”

“I will free you the day they come,” she promised, a hand over her heart, and incidentally that clever key. “I only ask that you be ready for me.” With one last grin, flirtatious and fierce, she vanished with a crack, leaving only the memory of that cold light in her wake.

 

 

~~

 

Tony’s return back home to Avengers tower was almost as tense as being introduced to Odin the first time around. The rest of the Avengers were all sprawled out in the main, shared living room, and all stared at him while he closed the door behind himself. None of them said a word; although after a few seconds, Natasha looked at the rest of her comrades and offered a slightly exasperated sigh.

Meeting her gaze Tony raised his eyebrows pointedly.

Her mouth twitching in an expression that might’ve been a little apologetic, the assassin nodded in confirmation.

“Oh good, now you’re all aware that I’m having regular sex with the Norse god of mischief and lies. Excellent,” Tony greeted, grinning with the brightest, most grating mockery he could manage. “I didn’t send anyone into cardiac arrest did I? If I did, please tell me we’ve got footage. Ooh, was it _Steve?_ ”

“Do you count as a god now, too?” Bruce countered, his good-humored bitterness assuring the mad inventor of acceptance from the mean-and-green quarter of the Avengers currently acting as part of this little face-off.

Counting Natasha, that was two down and two to go. Tony’s grin became a little more genuine as he responded, “It’s been taken into consideration, pending licensing and trademark issues, not to mention all the miracle-related claim forms, and peer reviews. Initially, there would’ve just been a few tests of courage or something equally really Viking-sounding like that, but given the moderately unlawful nature of my ascendence, the paperwork is a real nightmare.”

“Tony,” Steve said, all serious-and-concerned. “You’re really––okay with all this?”

“Yeah.” He grinned, still buzzing with the high of two full days spent messing with gods, extremely good sex, and the in-depth look he’d gotten at the workings of that rainbow-bridge of theirs, among other wonders that had made his hands itch for lab equipment. His head was full of light and schematics, diagrams, theories, and formulae. At the peripheral, occasionally intruding on the otherwise crisply clear logic and mathematics, were flickers of memory: Loki’s voice and hands unfolding whole new concepts of space, time, and inter-dimensional manipulation of both, which only lead to thoughts of Loki’s hands and voice and devilish mouth making Tony come undone altogether, which made him want to take the god apart in bed just one more time before he vanished into his lab to let the engineering sections of his brain take over. “Yeah, Cap. Trust me––even if you don’t trust Loki, at least trust me.”

“What’s Pepper think, anyway?” Clint inquired coolly.

Tony flinched a little at the attempted personal hit, and glared at him. “She’s been aware of it longer than Natasha, I’ll tell you that. She thinks I’m crazy, but she’s supportive as ever, _thanks_. Who do you think has been running my company while I’ve been off on a special contract with Asgard, doing experiments on Loki’s magic and deciphering how most of it works?”

“Play nice, boys,” Natasha chided, though there was a cool edge to her voice that made the rest of the room uneasy as their hind-brains reported danger.

“You get far?” Bruce asked quickly, brightening at the subject of scientific inquiry.

“I got a number of things, yeah. Got even more from that trip, let me tell you,” he offered with a wink. “Which is why I’m hitting the lab to start playing with inter-dimensional manipulation of matter. Anyone got any further problems?”

“I think you’re an asshole, for the record, but I won’t kill you in your sleep,” Clint said idly. “And I still trust you in a fight. Maybe not your judgement in day-to-day life, but-”

“Oh, Sweetheart, I’m so touched,” Tony scathed.

“I’ve got reasons to hate him, as you might remember,” the archer shot back.

“And I’ve got a few reasons I’m in love with him, these days. We’ll work on the rest of our gossip and bickering in the future, yeah?” He crossed the room, glad he’d managed to put on clothing that wasn’t made of leather before he made it back to the tower. He shrugged out of his blazer and tossed it over an empty chair as he headed toward the elevator to the lab levels, rolling up his sleeves. “I’ve got mad science to conduct: new ideas for the possibilities of teleportation, energy production, the works. Goodnight, gentlemen, and dear lady. And Mr. Barton.” He bowed dramatically as the elevator doors opened, then back-stepped into the elevator, which closed and proceeded to chime cheerfully as it took him up to his experimental-tech playground.

The rest of the Avengers, even Natasha to some extent, remained quiet in his wake after that memorable exit. The awkward silence lasted nearly a full minute.

“Did he... did he just admit to being in love with Loki?” Steve asked, managing to barely, barely keep his voice from turning to a squeak on the last syllable or two.

“I think he did,” Natasha muttered. “Holy fuck.”

“Agreed,” Bruce muttered.

“For future reference, Clint, if you try to bring Pepper up like that again, I’ll stab you with a fork,” the assassin said, regaining her composure. “She’s a good woman, and we’re lucky to have her to keep Tony and his company both in line.”

Clint opened his mouth, met her gaze, and saw something in there that stopped his words cold, but left his mouth hanging open a little.

Natasha winked at him, and rose from her chair, sauntering off to her room.

Clint shot Bruce an urgent look, willing the man to understand what had just happened here.

Bruce raised an eyebrow at him.

The archer glanced pointedly at the elevator Tony had used, then back to Bruce, then to the hall Natasha had vanished along, and then back to Bruce again, widening his eyes and raising his eyebrows.

Slowly, realization dawned. Bruce silently mouthed ‘No!’

Clint nodded sharply.

“I thought you and-”

Clint waved his hands in a desperately bid for silence, with a quick look in Steve’s direction. Luckily, the captain seemed to be trying to hide behind a newspaper and avoid thinking about Tony Stark.

Bruce’s lips formed an ‘O’ of surprise. “It’s, ah... open, then,” he said, very quietly.

“And I thus have some urgent apologizing to attend to. Promise you’ll drink heavily with me if I manage to fuck up this opportunity! Please!” the archer hissed with some urgency.

“Why not-” He stopped, recalling that Steve was alcohol-impervious, and Stark was Pepper’s ex, as well as someone Clint was royally pissed off at. “Oh. Yes. Well, then, yeah. You’d deserve it for losing that, and I’d need it in order to recall that I never got up to anything like that even before the green was an issue.”

“You’re a good man, Bruce Banner.”

“I get the distinct feeling that I want to know nothing whatsoever about what you two just agreed to,” Steve observed. “I have excellent hearing, you know.”

“You don’t want to know, yes, absolutely,” Clint said, with feeling, and then stalked quickly after Natasha.

Bruce shook his head slowly. “We’ll either find his head on a pike in the morning, or he’ll be the luckiest bastard out of all of us.”

“You think Natasha would-”

“No,” Bruce interrupted flatly, with a sharp edge as he tried not to laugh. “Not her, I don’t think.” _I wouldn’t put it past Pepper, though,_ he didn’t add aloud. “Living with you people is better than television ever was, or ever could be, I swear.”

“Tony?”

“Pepper. Natasha still keeps close in touch with her,” Bruce finally gave in, keeping a close eye on Steve’s face peering at him over the edge of the newspaper and trying not to think too hard about any other possible combinations of _Pepper_ and _Natasha_ and _close_ and _touch_. It would only depress him, he knew. _Clint you lucky little bastard._

“Oh, you think she’d be mad about his asking after what she thinks of Tony’s... affair?” _Fondue_ , the captain thought despite his efforts not to, and grimaced slightly at the overlap of old memories and new ones in such a disturbing manner.

“Yeah. She’s protective of Tony that way,” the scientist lied easily.

 

~~

 

Insomnia was frequently the norm, rather than the exception, for most of the Avengers. The common kitchen they shared more often saw two or three of them together talking quietly and amiably at 3am than at any other time of day, given their respective odd-hours and inconsistent schedules.

This time, however––four days after Tony’s return from Asgard, after which the team had seen him emerge from his work in the lab only twice for sustenance, Pepper’s voice audibly harassing him from his cellphone both times as he did so––Natasha was alone, looking out at the sky as it began to grey at its eastern edge. Daybreak was still an hour away, and her mind was restless yet fog-dulled with jet-lag from a recent mission on the other side of the globe. One of her hands had two fingers in a splint, she had the slowly-fading remnants of a black eye from the first day of her mission, and under her elegant black suit, two cracked ribs were wrapped just tight enough to irritate, but she was used to it.

The click of heels in the hall caused her to look away from the point on the horizon she had been staring through for the past several minutes as she had sipped at black coffee with the savor of one who needs bitter coffee on her tongue to match her equally bitter thoughts. _Woman’s heels, woman’s stride, heavy boots but ornate (metal sounds, independent of the shoes: armor) by the dull sound of their tread,_ the assassin identified immediately. _The woman is approximately 5’ 9” and trying to conceal her fatigue._ When the armored blonde woman appeared in the doorway, Natasha’s gun was already trained on her face.

“Ah, the lovely Lady Romanov,” the blonde sighed, smiling all too brightly. There was an edge to the smile that did not quite suit her face: just a shade too bleak for such open, expressive features clearly prone more to mirth and frequent laughter. “You look well tonight––mostly.” She strode further into the kitchen.

A low click of warning from the gun: the safety was off now. Natasha took a long sip of coffee, scanning the woman a bit more closely, catching smells of earth, burnt minerals, smoke and just a hint of brimstone. “And you are?” she inquired delicately.

“Not who I appear to be, clearly. Now that I think of it, I doubt that Amora has ever actually seen a gun, and would just keep walking,” the woman sighed, just as a dull gold-green glow, several shades darker than her wardrobe, swept up from her feet to her head. In its wake was a fast-fading burst of emerald smoke. Loki, once more tall, dark and male, looked down at her wearily once it faded. “Better?” he inquired drolly.

Natasha’s eyebrows raised further, in sincere and amused surprise this time. She had, a bit guiltily, grown fond of the occasions she crossed paths with the god of mischief. His humor tended toward the more sardonic and witty when he wasn’t busy prying people’s emotional and psychological armor open with childish glee. Then again, she had become fond of murderers before; they were her sort of people. She wouldn’t have even considered Tony Stark to be broken enough, under all the bravado and child-like impulsivity, to be of any equal sort of interest, if not for Loki’s abiding fascination with him. “Have you shown Tony that trick yet?” she asked, lowering her gun.

Loki stared at her with a tired expression that gave absolutely nothing away. He kept it up in silence for a full three minutes.

At that point, Natasha offered a pout of disappointment and changed the subject. “You look exhausted.”

“Some creatures are more illusion- and falsehood-resistant than others. Successfully fooling them, to any permanent degree, that I am someone other than myself, is hardly an easy task.” He tried and failed to suppress a yawn. “It’s even more difficult to successfully create the same impression upon them that another living, breathing creature would, such that they will recognize that person in future.”

“This being the blonde woman.”

Loki nodded. “Capturing an impression of her surface-thoughts was almost as tricky as using them later.”

“Sounds like you’ve had a fun week. Also, you smell like you’ve been in a volcano.”

The god considered this. “You aren’t too far off, with that, actually. I was making arrangements for a sort of alliance.” He stepped past her, heading straight for the refrigerator with purpose, and the air of a man who would let nothing else get in his way. “It required a great deal of preparation, and was no easy task.” He began pulling things from the refrigerator: a carton of eggs, a few vegetables, two tomatoes, and some leftover ham from the last time Pepper had ordered a full dinner for them all.

“Hungry, are you?”

“Somewhat. I’m willing to share the results of my culinary efforts, in exchange for depleting your stores.”

Natasha considered. “I just hope you’re a better cook than Thor. Unless heavily supervised, he can burn just about anything when he’s not using an open flame and a roasting spit.”

“He never bothered to study many arts requiring more finesse than swinging a hammer,” Loki muttered. “I studied alchemy, potion-making, and matters equivalent to Midgardian biochemistry.” He placed the vegetables on one cutting board and the ham on another. “The preparation of food is only a little simpler than that.”

“I’m intrigued, then,” the assassin admitted. “Need any help with chopping or-”

With an idle gesture at his ingredients, they went from solid wholes to neatly-diced pieces. He then navigated to the spice cabinet, possibly by scent, and began quietly rifling through their selection of herbs. “I thank you for your offer, but I should do well enough on my own.”

Natasha sat back and watched him work. It was a simple dish, equivalent to an Italian frittata. “You said something about getting an impression from that woman?” Mostly, she wanted to see how much she could persuade him to talk before he got boring. It was late, and jet-lag made her impulsive that way.

“Yes. Imitating another practitioner of magic is always hard, but even more so when you don’t want them to know you’ve taken a sample of thought and magic from them.” His voice was absent-minded and lightly pedantic, as though sheer exhaustion had reduced him to repeating old lessons learned by rote, if only because it was easier to sound boring than it was to put thought and effort into evasiveness.

The assassin made a polite and thoughtful noise, as she always did when one of the boys went off on a subject she honestly had little interest in: advanced mathematical formulae could only be so useful in her line of work, and advanced magic theory being applied to people she was unlikely to ever meet seemed equally distant and vague. Perhaps it was the jet-lag. She continued to watch Loki cook with some amusement.

He managed to change their dried herbs into fresh ones with a bit of effort, which further dialed up the flavor of it: particularly that of basil and chives. He also prepared three of them, each one filling the frying pan. Clearly Thor’s appetite was not unusual amongst Asgardians.

“Is Tony going to start eating portion sizes akin to what you, Steve and Thor seem able to consume?” she asked, as Loki set two of the frittatas on a platter in the middle of the length of granite counter which was used alternately as the kitchen’s bar-counter, a place to lay out a buffet, or simply the gathering place for late-night insomniacs and their midnight edibles. The third portion was cut into four pieces, arranged on one dinner plate in front of Loki himself. Natasha accepted a plate and fork of her own when he proffered them.

“Most likely. It seems to come with how fast our respective metabolisms work.” He perched on the barstool directly across from her. The god took a sizable bite with an odd sort of delicacy, chewed only briefly, and swallowed. “Speaking of your Captain: the serum he was given was a purely man-made creation?”

“Yes. There’s no evidence of any outside interference, there,” Natasha said. “Just one astonishingly brilliant scientist.”

Loki hummed thoughtfully.

Natasha at last used the knife and fork on the serving platter to cut off a quarter of one of Loki’s creations, and move it to her own plate. She took a bite and blinked in surprise. “Credit where credit is due: you’re a good cook.”

The god smirked. “I’ll be sure to add that to my considerable repertoire, listing you as a reference.”

“What’s got you thinking about Steve’s serum?”

The god looked up at her. “You may have noticed that his physical abilities are more akin to Thor’s and mine than to those of a normal human. I’m also intrigued that it only took the one dose. In Asgard, semi-regular consumption of Idunn’s apples are necessary to keep us this way. If we go more than a century without at least one, we begin to age, and to lose our physical endurance. After that, our strength. Then, if they happen to be a practitioner of arts like mine, they may see those powers weaken, too. It’s not common, and can be reversed by time in the healing room, and consumption of the fruit daily for a period of time.”

Natasha nodded thoughtfully. “I hadn’t considered that.”

“Nor had I, until Tony used that serum and some hand-waving as explanation for his near-immortality, at least to those Thor introduced him to who were so impolite as to ask,” the god mused. “No one at all has been able to recreate the serum, either, which makes me still more curious. Humanity is persistent, if nothing else, and years of attempts to recreate such a formula, especially in very recent years with your Captain’s blood to refer to––surely someone must have at least gotten close by now.”

“Bruce did,” the assassin said softly. “He came closer than most, but the inclusion of gamma radiation, among other things, caused rather different effects.”

The god looked a little uneasy. “Hmm. That’s a disconcerting pattern once more held true.”

“Pardon?”

Loki shrugged. “I knew that, of course. And I’ve read all of the information S.H.I.E.L.D. has on Dr. Erskine, most notably his theories about the serum: that it brought to the surface that which was normally hidden underneath a man’s skin. In the case of your Steve Rogers, it was strength of character, earnestness, and stubborn determination.”

“Here I thought it was ‘goodness’ or something,” Natasha interjected quietly.

The god rolled his eyes, and pressed on, “In the case before that, of Johann Schmidt, it brought out other, more grotesque characteristics. Strength was there, but of a different quality: red as inflammation, ugly, and hateful.” He did not sound as though he considered those qualities to be necessarily bad. “I can only imagine that it would be terribly inconvenient to carry that sort of display around, advertising some physical manifestation of one’s innermost qualities, unless one happens to be a somewhat dull person.”

“This doesn’t say much good about Bruce, I suspect,” Natasha mused.

“I’ve read all of his files,” Loki murmured. “Let us just say that I find the Hulk understandable.” He did not say ‘relatable’ but there might have been the slightest suggestion of it.

“You think Captain America is dull, then?”

Loki shrugged. “I also think that Thor is dull, though I concede that Steve Rogers is slightly less so. He, at least, knows what it is to be truly broken, weak and powerless. Thor has had only the briefest, mildest taste of such experiences, and thus has all the depth and observational capacity of a moderately well-read adolescent from Midgard.” The god rose briefly, to help himself to the pot of coffee Natasha had made, before returning to the table with a cup.

Natasha mulled over his words. “I find Steve interesting to some extent because he began weak, and was broken, but did not let it make him become selfish, or distance him from the world around him and all the concerns that come with that sort of awareness.” She took a sip of her own coffee. “That makes him unusual, at the very least.”

“Unusual, yes, but not more complex. Selfishness is the line by which individuals are defined,” Loki said. “Without it, they are at once more, and less, than their peers. More in that they will act on behalf of others, and change the world around them in the process to perhaps a greater extent than most; yet also less, because they do not act for their own benefit alone, and are therefore always part of a group, rather than a whole unto themselves.”

“I think you just find broken people more interesting.”

“Of course,” Loki said, sounding surprised that she might have even entertained any other possibility. “Everyone does.”

The assassin considered. “I think you’re right, on that.” She shrugged. “So individuals are bricks, and heroes are the mortar that keep the wall together. What are you, then?”

“Wrecking ball,” he countered. “Obviously. You, I think, would be a bit more hands-on. A prybar: you loosen just enough bricks in just the right places, to bring about the sort of collapse needed from you.”

“And Tony?”

Loki smirked. “Variable. Some days he is the wrecking ball, and others he’s the engineer designing something better, tougher, and less fragile to prevent future harm.”

“And you approve of that?”

“I find it fascinating, that he understands chaos well enough to dole it out, or roll with it, but is also capable of bending chaotic forces into new and orderly shapes when he has need of it,” he said quietly, meeting her gaze. He did not say it, but his prior words and his current half-smile were eloquent enough: _he is interesting because of the unique ways in which he is broken, which are more beautiful to me than any I’ve ever seen before._ He knew that Natasha was just broken enough, in just the right ways, to follow his logic and understand those little implications. It was refreshing, really.

She smiled back at him, and said nothing.

They ate in silence for a while, then, watching the sky grow more grey as dawn drew just a little closer. Neither appeared surprised when Bruce, underdressed somewhat in just a pair of pants and a robe, wandered blearily into the kitchen. He sniffed the air. “Food? Steve cook?”

Loki looked quite amused, watching the man capable of becoming a monster that could shatter the bones of gods, now half-awake and moving slowly, inexorably toward the coffee pot. “I did, actually.”

Bruce muttered, not looking up from filling his coffee cup at first. Then he took his first sip, turned around and looked at Loki properly. It took a few seconds of blinking before it sunk in and he visibly twitched. “Oh. Well.”

“I watched him prepare it, and I haven’t had any ill effects so far,” Natasha said brightly. “And it’s pretty tasty.”

The scientist looked from one, to the other of them, back and forth, a few times, then shrugged. “Alright, I admit, this isn’t the weirdest thing I’ve ever woken up to, living in this place.”

Loki seemed about to inquire after that, but changed his mind. He had cleared his plate once already, and now put another large half-frittata on it. He gestured graciously to the remaining food on the platter in invitation.

“Isn’t this just a bit––weirdly domestic for you?” Bruce inquired.

The god raised an eyebrow. “I’m nothing if not unpredictable. You’re lucky to have caught me in a good enough mood that I’m willing to be polite for the nonce. Rest assured that I shall return to veiled threats, misleading and ominous promises, and other means of constantly reassuring all of you that I’m a liar, a murderer, and generally a monster, soon enough.” He shrugged. “I am, however, a monster capable of repaying a debt. In this case, I’ve robbed your food stores after promising Miss Romanov that I would share that which I made out of them.”

Natasha shot Loki an arch look.

He returned it with an imperious air.

“That looks more familiar,” Bruce remarked.

“If this is how you respond to a display of good manners on my part...” Loki began, beginning to look irritated.

“Sorry, fine, you’re being merciful today out of sheer contrariness. Bag of cats: I got it,” Bruce murmured, taking a seat beside Natasha, across from the god of mischief, who summoned another plate and fork seemingly from the ether, but Natasha recognized it as one of the ones from the nearby cabinet.

“Bag of cats?” Loki asked, sincerely bemused.

“Best not to ask,” Natasha said, careful not to respond too quickly. Dawn arrived, and the three of them observed it for a few moments, Bruce doing so as he added a bit of sugar to his coffee.

“An aside, Dr. Banner: I have these to offer your team, if you would be willing to analyze them and confirm for the others that they are harmless.” He pulled a leather pouch from nowhere in particular and pushed it across the table. “This is a powdered mixture I’ve formulated which provides the recipient with resistance against the variety of mind control that I was taught by those in charge of the Chitauri. It’s a rather more heavy-handed method of influencing others than I generally used before that, but there was hardly time for subtlety after my initial arrival in Midgard, so I had to make do.”

Bruce blinked at him, suddenly very awake. “Pardon?”

“In return, the Avengers can perhaps owe me some small favor.” He grinned, sharp and devilish as ever.

The scientist picked up the pouch and looked it over, then glanced at Natasha, who was examining Loki’s face closely. “What sort of favor?” she asked.

“I’m not actually sure yet,” he mused. “I like having people in my debt, if only a little. Keep in mind that oaths made to creatures such as myself are more binding than most. Your ability to lie or renege will be affected.”

“And yours too?” Natasha verified.

“I will be forced to keep what promises are made a part of the deal,” Loki admitted. “It’s in my nature, just as breathing is in yours.” When she continued to regard him with that level, unflinching stare, he eventually added, “Also, I suspect it will reassure a certain archer of yours that Tony is not as insane as he believes.”

Bruce made a face. “You’re doing that thing where you have depth again, and some bizarre form of pseudo-sanity.”

“Rest assured, that’s been here all along. I’m just very good at concealing it when required. I’m sure you will all be briefed on that at some point. I suspect Fury is still consulting obscure resources to verify my claims in that regard, after my last chat with him.”

Bruce looked to Natasha.

Natasha rolled her eyes and shrugged.

At last, Bruce took a bite of the offered breakfast, looking pleasantly surprised for a moment. “I’ll examine the stuff. If it’s as harmless as you claim, we can see about testing it, before we agree to owing you any favors.”

“You believe you’ll have volunteers?” Loki inquired.

“We could always-” Bruce started.

The god caught on quickly. “No. You may not use _him_ ,” he snapped testily.

Natasha shook her head and raised her eyebrows at Bruce. _Ix-nay on-ay ony-Tay_ , was heavily implied, though not spoken aloud. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” she said, giving her voice an edge of command.

“Cross what bri-” Steve halted in the doorway, wide-eyed for a moment, staring straight at Loki. He had a towel around his neck and his usual work-out clothes on, fresh from the gym level. “Um.” He lacked the insomniac excuse that the others had, this time. He was just an early-riser, most days.

“Captain,” Loki greeted smoothly. “As leader of your team, I suppose your should be informed of this offer. Natasha?”

The assassin snorted at him, but understood the move: coming from her, the deal would sound a bit less suspicious. She briefly reviewed the pouch, its contents, and the prospect of the favor to be owed Loki. “Honestly, I think he’s looking to make Clint less annoying the next time he decides to drop in unannounced like this,” she concluded.

The god of mischief narrowed his eyes at her, but did not contradict her assertion; instead, he sipped his coffee in silence and observed Steve’s response.

The captain blinked at the trio sitting, rather peacefully, in their shared kitchen, and once more felt the urge to laugh at himself for ever thinking that his life would cease to surprise him, or produce anything more bizarre than all that he had already seen. “And you all responded...”

Bruce explained his counter-offer.

Steve thought it over, and stared hard at Loki for a long few minutes.

The god of mischief stared back, his expression a study in impassivity that very nearly matched Natasha’s best.

“You’re up to something, obviously.”

“Of course I am. I cooked breakfast for my former arch-enemies, and then offered them a questionable and potentially risky little trade. You all won’t be able to reproduce the contents of that pouch until I provide one or two necessary resources from Asgard––otherwise you would simply learn to make your own without ever agreeing to owe me a favor––and none of you will trust my word until Dr. Banner has confirmed that the stuff is safe for human consumption. I can promise you that the favor I will ask of the Avengers will be of a similar sort: I may need a resource, or perhaps even a place safe from external interference of a... _certain_ sort.” He glanced pointedly at the pouch. “It will not risk your lives any more than offering this to you has risked mine.”

“And how much did you risk to procure that?” Natasha asked quickly.

“You are far too clever, do you know that?” Loki asked, in perfect Russian.

The assassin hardly blinked, and responded, in the same tongue, “Spies are just professional con-artists with steady employers. I know this game, and I won’t hesitate to call you out on it where I can.”

Loki tisked. “No fun at all,” he concluded in Russian, before switching back to English. “It was not easy, I will admit. One or two of the ingredients are rare, and I may have had difficulty escaping the person from whom I stole them.” He shrugged. “I wouldn’t say that I was in mortal peril, but there was a risk that I would lose a bit of my skin before I could end his life.”

Bruce looked oddly reassured to hear Loki talking a bit more like a psychopath again; it was more familiar territory.

“You didn’t do that just for our benefit,” Steve said. It wasn’t a question.

Loki nodded. “I did not. Obviously. I didn’t say those ingredients were the only things I got out of it.” He sipped his coffee, not taking his eyes off the captain.

Steve sighed reluctantly. “Bruce’s plan is sound enough. If this stuff works, it would be an asset for defense, and we could work on expanding it to block other sorts of magic with a bit of study, perhaps?”

“I’ll see what I can do, anyway,” Bruce muttered.

Loki nodded at them all, relaxing a bit. “Excellent. And I hear no objections from just above the ceiling tiles, either.” He glanced up and they all heard a faint rustle and a curse from overhead.

“How long has he been there?” Bruce asked.

“About thirty minutes,” Natasha said. She’d heard him, ever so softly, just as she and Loki began discussing how interesting or uninteresting Steve Rogers might be.

“You’re all bastards,” Clint said from within the ceiling.

“Actually, I’m quite aware who my biological father was, and was then legitimately adopted by another. If you’re going to insult me, at least be accurate about it,” Loki responded, sounding amused.

A series of creaks followed: Clint making his way out to wherever he had found his way in, cursing under his breath all the while.

Loki stood. “Now that that’s done with...” He cleared his throat. “JARVIS?”

“Already done, sir.”

Steve turned at the sound of the elevator between the kitchen and living room pinging, just before the doors slid open. He looked at the god of mischief. “Still playing puppet master. I really hate that.”

“I’m hardly about to change for you,” Loki drawled.

“Loki?” Tony stepped out of the elevator, then regarded the little breakfast-party in the kitchen, and promptly burst out laughing.

Despite attempts to the contrary, Natasha found herself repressing a snigger as well.

Tony strolled over, smirking at the looks of mixed discomfort and irritation on Bruce and Steve’s faces. The engineer’s hair was mussed in a way that suggested he’d gotten a few hours rest at some point, probably in an ungraceful heap caused by collapsing in the middle of something relatively harmless at his one of his worktables. “You haven’t lost your touch, I notice,” he said, once he came to a halt just behind Loki’s right shoulder.

“Hardly,” the god confirmed, glancing back at him.

Tony reached around the god and nicked his fork, stealing a bite, then another two, savoring the awkward silence. “It’s still unfair that you cook this well. You’re a prince; you should be incompetent at it.”

Loki gave and amused snort, but said nothing further. He kept his eyes downcast, keeping whatever expressions they might show out of view from the rest of the Avengers.

After a few more bites to clear Loki’s plate, the engineer smiled brightly at the rest of the room. “Lovely seeing you all getting along this morning.” He then placed both hands on Loki’s shoulders, squeezing just slightly.

Taking the hint, Loki vanished, taking Tony with him, leaving behind a cracking sound and a flash of green light. Steve jumped. Natasha rolled her eyes. Bruce sniggered. “They deserve each other.”

“Agreed,” the assassin concurred, raising her mug as if in a toast.

Bruce met it with his, the ceramic clinking dully.

“I think we’re all insane,” Steve sighed, turning on his heel and heading back down the hall toward his own rooms.

 

~~

 

The pair of them landed in a sprawl on Tony’s bed, Loki quickly rolling off him to one side as they both laughed helplessly. “Jeez, their faces. How long had you been messing with them?”

“If you don’t count conversation with the dear little assassin, just about half an hour, I suppose,” Loki breathed, managing to catch his breath after the initial laughing fit.

“Why doesn’t she count as messed with, anyway?” He shot Loki a half-warning look.

“She’s a liar too, and is actually fond of me.” The god of mischief shrugged. “Nothing more than that; she’s not half as distracting as you are.”

The engineer smiled a bit warmly at that, then recalled the scene upstairs yet again. “I can’t believe you cooked them breakfast,” Tony all but sputtered, rolling onto his side to press his forehead to Loki’s shoulder as he sniggered further.

“Dr. Banner _did_ seem rather suspicious of that,” Loki admitted.

“You offered them that concoction you mentioned, I guess?”

“Yes. You missed the archer in the ceiling.”

“I often do,” Tony muttered. “And he calls _me_ ridiculous.”

“I suspect that no one in the Avengers was brought in because they were sane, stable and non-ridiculous persons,” Loki deadpanned.

“True enough.” Tony pushed himself up on one arm and settled over Loki. “You smell like sulfur, smoke, and patchouli. Should I be concerned?”

“Patchouli?” Loki looked momentarily bemused, then understanding.”Ah, it must be some leftover trace from masquerading as Amora. She uses something that smells similar to some Midgardian perfumes.”

Tony raised his eyebrows. “You did mention something about having been a woman for a while.”

“Yes, it was mostly for the sake of disconcerting people,” Loki mused. “It worked quite well, while it lasted.”

“You were being someone in particular, though.”

“Yes, an enchantress I’ve been previously acquainted with.”

Tony’s eyebrows raised.

“It was a few decades ago, and even then she already had a lover who, shall we say, does not share. She was not, and still is not my type, in any case.”

“Oh?”

“Blondes, male or female, remind me of Thor on some level. It’s decidedly unattractive to me.”

Tony nodded, but his expression only grew a little more shrewd. “Last time I recall you returning from somewhere smelling like you’d been dipped in a volcano and dusted in sulfur, you’d been torn up by something in Muspelheim,” he said, calm and direct.

“Not this time,” Loki assured. “Just visiting a captive from that general region. He tends to smoke up the place a bit.”

“That’s an unfamiliar plan,” Tony mused, and settled himself over Loki’s body, straddling his waist. “Do tell.”

Loki hesitated, half a dozen lies and excuses springing to mind reflexively, but when he opened his mouth the let them slip free, Tony leaned closer with a low, warning noise in his throat, pressing two fingers against Loki’s lower lip. “Loki,” he said, low and just harsh enough to make the god of mischief focus on him.

“He’s called Surtur. He caused Asgard no end of trouble a few centuries ago,” Loki began, holding Tony’s gaze. “Odin trapped him, chained him, and locked him away in the earth’s crust, deep below the surface somewhere cold and remote.”

“And you decided to pay him a visit, looking like this Amora person. She’s Aesir, yeah?”

Loki nodded, staring with fascination at Tony’s face as the engineer deciphered him, predicted him, kept up with and matched him.

“I’m guessing he’d heard of her. It wouldn’t be worth the effort of borrowing a real person for it. You mentioned how tricky that can be.”

The god of mischief settled his hands on Tony’s hips and nodded again, beginning to smirk.

“Since you couldn’t show up yourself, you don’t want him to implicate you, which means you’re sure he’ll be caught at some point. You want to let him out.” He tilted his head. “Tell me why exactly you think this is a good idea.”

“He’s expendable, he agreed to take out the first wave of a certain army we’re expecting-”

“Why?” Tony prompted.

“He believes they will be here to threaten Midgard, and negotiate with Asgard.”

The engineer hummed thoughtfully. “That’s good. You’re sure he won’t balk if he happens to notice the army already attacking, or preparing to?”

Loki raised a hand. “Ah, but if they even get that far, I should be able to detect them at least a day before their anticipated arrival here. I can deliver Surtur while they’re still on their way, under the auspices that he’s to make it look like an ambush by Asgard.” He splayed his fingers, hand palm-up. “If he somehow survives the army, he will still be sufficiently weakened that Thor or I could easily recapture him, if not kill him ourselves.”

“Unless you’re too distracted by, say, the large army we’re expecting,” Tony said, curling his hands around the god of mischief’s wrists and slowly moving them along the bed until he had them pinned just over Loki’s head. He felt buzzed by how Loki let him, and how with Loki it was equally likely to be an offer, or a trick, or even an outright trap.

Loki squirmed slightly. “Well...”

“Either make sure he’ll get killed, or make sure someone’s there to be sure he doesn’t run off. He’d be able to work against us, and he sounds like the sort who would like to set earth on fire, or join a certain someone’s army just for the chance to get even.”

Loki sighed raggedly, narrowing his eyes up at Tony. “If you want to play it the boring way, I suppose.”

“I’d rather not have him track you down because you still smell a bit like Amora’s patchouli or whatever,” the engineer shot back, changing his grip on Loki’s wrists to one-handed, giving himself a hand free to trail fingers down the god of mischief’s ribcage. 

Dragging his teeth over his lower lip, Loki stared up at him with wide, dark eyes. “If you weren’t so damned attractive when you do this, I’d be very annoyed.”

Tony chuckled softly, and leaned still closer. His voice low, with a rough edge to it, he murmured close to Loki’s ear, “You like it when I take you apart, I think: your ideas, your senses.” He licked at the corner of Loki’s jaw for emphasis and relished the faint full-body shiver it earned him. “That’s what we both have always wanted, I think: an audience that really, _really_ gets it.”

“This is why I missed you,” the god of mischief rasped, the words getting him worked up as much as the feel of Tony’s mouth so close, but not close enough. “You’re an arrogant madman, you know.”

“So are you,” Tony countered, his lips brushing Loki’s ear as he spoke. The warm feathering sensation of his breath there earned a low sound from the taller man under him. “You wanted credit for catching him, didn’t you?”

Loki made a noise. “Maybe.”

Tony bit at his throat, earning another small quickly-smothered noise akin to a whimper. “You wanted to present Surtur like a prize, either trussed up in chains, or as a head on a plate. Even if it were Thor instead of you doing the presenting, you’d have unleashed something Odin wanted sequestered away and forgotten, locked up until the end of the world.” He pushed a knee between Loki’s thighs and pressed up and closer, applying pressure just _so_.

Letting out a slow, ragged hiss, Loki arched a bit in response. “Are you trying to encourage me?” he bit out.

“Not really. You only really blush like you’re doing now when you know you’re caught out. You don’t quite like that feeling, even though you do like it when I pull your plan apart,” Tony murmured. “Just a bit not good, darling.”

“You say that, but you’re–– _ahh_.” Loki’s hips bucked as Tony slipped a hand down the front of his pants and took hold of him: hot, just dry enough to be a bit rough when the engineer stroked him, slow and tight. “Fuck.”

“I do say that, because I could see doing the same thing. I don’t like secrets like that. I don’t like a lot of the horrors S.H.I.E.L.D. keeps tucked away, and I frequently want to drag them out in the light myself.” He stilled his hand until Loki’s eyes fell open again, pupils blown. “If you’re going to release a weapon, though, make sure you keep the rights to it so you can reign it in before someone else takes it.”

“The voice of experience,” Loki managed, breathing a bit ragged.

“With positive re-enforcement, so you’ll remember.” He stroked again, slow enough that he could see, in Loki’s expression, the effort put forth every time the god of mischief stopped himself reflexively thrusting against his touch. “You’re gorgeous like this. I can see all sorts of cracks this way.”

The god of lies groaned: a broken sound. Words like that could do nothing but break him open just a little further, expose him a little further. “You push too f-” he stopped, breath hitching, when he felt Tony’s lips and teeth and tongue on the sensitive skin just below his ear.

“Never too far. Not while I have you like this. You gave me all the time I could possibly need to get into your head as far as you’ve gotten in mine. You’ve got more facets than a bag of broken glass, so I’m guaranteed plenty to discover, and plenty to hold my interest.”

Loki’s brain was getting hazy, associative nonsense-thoughts ( _Bag of cats?_ )humming in the background, peripheral to the louder thoughts along the lines of _Tony_ and _Yes_ and _More don’t stop_. “Fuck,” he panted. Then, softer but with more conviction and more heat, he added, “ _Yes._ ” _Yes please take me apart._ It was more than a desire to be seen, or to be understood. It was a desire to be recognized, feared, acknowledged as broken, and loved in a way that could fit in with all his jagged edges. It was the desire to be _known_ instead of merely _known of_ for once.

Tony caught his lips then, almost gentle at first, but only briefly. He deepened the kiss quick enough, tasting traces of smoke and coffee on Loki’s tongue. The god of mischief all but writhed under him, seeking more contact, moaning hungrily into Tony’s mouth. He huffed satisfaction when he felt the engineer’s hips roll against his own in response, and wrapped one long leg around Tony’s waist encouragingly. Tony pulled back from his lips with a curse. “Clothes. Magic. Now.”

“Thought you’d never ask,” Loki countered, smiling and breathless and biting at the engineer’s lip as he banished their clothes to the floor with a word, a thought, and the movement of his fingers: not as tidy as when he had a hand free, but it would do in a pinch, and he reveled in the way Tony tensed and shuddered just a little at the feel of skin on skin, and of Loki’s leg around him pulling him still closer.

 _God, Loki, your legs will be the death of me_ , Tony might’ve said, if he weren’t too busy using his remaining brainpower to keep Loki pinned down while he snatched the bottle of lube from off his nightstand. “Don’t suppose you’d behave if I let go?” He doubted it, and so was already flicking the bottle open.

“Do I ever?”

“Well, since you ask,” Tony mused, pouring the bottle onto Loki’s stomach, then setting the bottle aside. He swiped some away for his cock, and the rest to coat his fingers before he pressed two against Loki’s entrance, slipping in slow enough to make the god of mischief all but convulse with impatience. “You’re _real_ well-behaved when you’re halfway to coming.”

“Nngh,” Loki Silvertongue replied eloquently. “Don’t tease, I will kill you.”

“No you won’t,” the engineer replied, moving his hand and fingers with practiced skill, smirking when the god of mischief let out a small, broken noise in response. “If you did, I’d never find out what you were going to do next, and you would never know what I might’ve done next. It’s lose-lose that way, and you’re a cheater who prefers to play with the odds stacked in your _favor_.”

Loki half-laughed, or as close to a laugh as he could when he was having trouble remembering how to breathe. “Yes. Fine. Yes, but _please_ , just get on with it.”

Tony’s eyebrows raised. The ‘please’ was new. “You really did miss me,” he teased, but out of mercy he pulled his fingers from their work, and replaced them with something more substantial: pressing in slow but not quite gentle, because he had a feeling Loki needed to really feel it. The god of mischief hissed relief and rolled his hips down hard, ruining all of Tony’s plans concerning slow and patient because _fuck_. “Ahh, Loki, careful, I’m close-”

“Not this time, I don’t think,” the god of mischief hissed back, voice low and dark and spiked headily with need. “Reckless here, careful later: I promise. Lesson learned, now fuck me.” Using his shoulder blades for leverage he arched up and undulated his hips in an utterly maddening fashion.

Tony didn’t need to be told twice, gripping just above Loki’s hip where he could feel Loki’s lean muscles move with every thrust, and every little rolling motion where Loki countered him, kept up with him, and frankly took his breath away. He kept pushing until he felt his own climax creeping up on him, sinking claws of pleasure into the base of his spine. Letting go of Loki’s wrists, he reached between them and took Loki in hand, rubbing rough and too fast. He let the god of mischief’s free hands pull him down into a furious kiss, messy and desperate, and swallowed the sounds Loki made when he came, that long-limbed body shuddering under him, against him, and tightening around him until Tony was making sounds too: possessive and broken and good. He stubbornly rode Loki through a few aftershocks before he lost it, and slowed to a halt, breathing hard against Loki’s throat.

After they collapsed in a comfortable heap, he felt the god of mischief’s hand move, somewhere between them, and felt the lingering stickiness vanish. There were times that magic was a truly beautiful thing, he decided. With Loki curled against him, pliant and warm and drifting off to sleep, and Tony himself feeling similarly satisfied and drained in all sorts of good ways, this certainly seemed like one of them. He tugged the sheet up over them and closed his eyes, listening to Loki’s slow, even breaths.

 

~~

 

Tony had kept his penthouse floor mostly separated from the rest of the Avengers-related floors below, and had improved upon it in the remodel after that first incident with Loki, but he’d kept the overall setup of the room––with the bar, the couch, and so forth––mostly the same. And he’d left clear the section of floor Loki had been pried out of, out of some reverence for that notable event.

He knew that room like the back of his hand and the places along Loki’s ribcage that made the god of mischief twitch or moan or shiver, or any combination of the three, when touched the right way. So when he stepped out later, in the early evening after sleeping almost as many hours as an average human, he sensed something was off even before he saw the woman sitting at his bar with her back to him. She was tall, and cut an elegant-looking figure. Her hair was interesting: half blond and full, half blue-black and sleek enough it looked at first glance like she’d slicked it back.

“You’re new,” Tony observed. He was wearing the first pair of jeans he’d been able to find, and Loki’s shirt with the sleeves rolled up: it was a bit too long, and a bit tight around the chest, but he didn’t really care. The point was: it was Loki’s, and he was wearing it because it smelled like god of mischief. It wasn’t the sort of look he’d usually go for, meeting someone the first time, but people who dropped in silently, unannounced, and somehow didn’t trip a single alarm, didn’t usually get the royal treatment from Tony Stark unless they were Loki.

For some reason, though, he hesitated; it was probably because he’d registered the cut of her tunic and breeches as being similar to what Loki wore when he was neither in his armor, nor in Midgardian clothing.

“I could say the same to you, Mr. Stark.” She turned her head a little, showing him the side of her face with the hair like spun white gold above it. Her eye was a familiar shade of almost unnatural dark green, and there was something equally familiar about the curve of her lips when she smiled. After a moment, she swiveled around on the barstool to face him properly.

Perhaps it was because his current lover had a habit of turning blue when exposed to extreme cold, but Tony’s only response to her appearance was a blink. The dichotomy theme continued. The blonde side was elegant, pretty, and very human-looking; the side with darker hair had skin of such dark blue it was nearly black, with whorls of lighter markings: many more than Loki had, and different in style, more like wide-spaced lines of wood grain, emphasizing the lithe shape of every muscle, every long limb. On her face, the markings took slightly different shape, making her look almost skeletal. Her other eye was black from lid to lid, though as Tony stepped closer her iris caught the light and revealed itself to be a dark charcoal-grey, drowning in ink. “I am Hel,” the woman said, watching him closely, curiously as he approached.

That gave the engineer pause. “Oh,” he said, eyes widening a little as a small voice in the back of his head started to quietly scream, _Don’t fuck up! Don’t fuck up!_ He closed the distance a bit more quickly, then, concealing nerves behind a small smile that was rather more gentle than he’d intended: harder to hide behind than his more flashy façade. She held out a hand, not for him to kiss, but clearly prompting him for a normal, Midgardian handshake with her right (darker) hand, which Tony shook without hesitation, feeling more and more intrigued. “It’s good to finally meet you,” he said, and meant it.

She returned his smile with one of her own: softer than her father’s, but still with that curling edge that suggested she was amused by something. Her grip was firm, and stronger than the long, elegant fingers suggested. “I can already see some of why he likes you, I think.”

Tony raised an eyebrow, slowly regaining his composure. “Oh?”

“Most people, aside from my kin, look almost exclusively at this eye.” She gestured toward her green one. “You focus on the other, and it’s clear that my appearance doesn’t discomfit you at all.”

The engineer smirked a little. “It’s interesting, is all. Not human, quite, but still fine.” He hesitated. “May I?” He held out a hand.

She seemed surprised, but extended her darker arm.

Tony traced the markings along the back of her hand, to halfway up her forearm.

“I’ve not actually seen––well, since we found out Odin’s secret concerning my father’s nature, I haven’t seen that look on him,” Hel said. Glancing up from Tony’s fingers to meet his eye, she asked, “Have you?”

The engineer nodded. “Yeah. He has some marks like this, but different: more sparse, less intricate.” He smiled at her and pulled his fingers away.

Hel nodded slowly. “He does seem to trust you, which is very strange, really.” A small smile. “I don’t know if he ever really trusted my mother.”

Tony blinked, unsure quite how to proceed there. With Loki, Hel’s mother was something of a verboten subject, like Tony’s breakup with Pepper. “We, ah, haven’t exactly talked about her, admittedly.”

Hel laughed a little. “I’m not surprised, really. They were younger, and a bit foolish. Father thought he loved Sigyn, who in turn thought she loved him, but when things went awry, the inevitable break around the false impressions they had given themselves and each other, came about quite abruptly.” She glanced down for a moment. “I had no small part in that. Sigyn has never been sure quite how to react to me, which is where much of it started.”

“That’s unpleasant,” Tony remarked, his voice lacking any biting edge this time.

“Yes. Much of life is.” She shrugged. “Now I rule Helheim, or Niflheim; names vary depending on what race is discussing the place. It’s sort of the underworld of the nine realms, but it suits me.” Her smile returned. “Though I now understand better why the cold has never bothered me.”

Tony returned the smile, with a flicker of bitter amusement. “Just when I think my family’s degree of dysfunction might be significant, I talk to someone from Asgard, and realize it could’ve been worse.”

Hel laughed, surprised and pleased. “Now that sounds like there’s a story behind it, Mr. Stark.”

“There is. Long story.”

She glanced up, toward the door to Tony’s bedroom, then back to him. “I should like to hear it some time. I would like to know more of you, given how much father seems to care for you.”

Tony swallowed tightly at that. “I think I would like to know you better, too,” he said, and meant it. For all that she was cool and elegant, he could detect sharper edges, and a strength about her like folded steel.

A moment later, the bedroom door opened, and Loki stepped through it in just his trousers and a crisp white cotton undershirt. His clothes were rumpled, and his hair was a bit less immaculate than usual. The god of mischief managed three steps past the door before his spine stiffened, and he blinked himself fully awake with remarkable speed. He looked straight at Hel with an expression of some amazement before breaking out in a smile that made Tony’s breath catch: the one that the engineer tended to spend days at a time trying to surprise out of him, if only because it warmed him through like nothing else.

“You’re far too good at sneaking up on me,” Loki said, as he strode up to them, sounding amused and a little off-balance.

Hel left the barstool before he quite reached them and seized him in a hug, which Loki returned easily, murmuring something softly into her hair on the darker side: something that made her squeeze a little tighter for a moment before she pulled away.

Tony watched, feeling at a loss for how to react. He almost felt as though he were intruding, but he was too curious, and too caught up in it, to even pretend to look away. He was rewarded when Loki glanced his way, hesitant, and returned the smile Tony hadn’t even noticed he’d been wearing.

Noting her father’s distraction, Hel tilted her head up to murmur in his ear, too quiet for Tony to hear, “I think I like him. You should keep him.”

Loki snorted, and responded in an old Nordic tongue, “What do you _think_ I’ve been doing?”

She smacked at his arm in response, playfully scolding. “Don’t be rude,” she muttered, a bit louder.

Switching back to English, Loki remarked, “I see you’ve met, then.”

“Yeah, just a bit,” Tony responded, arching an eyebrow.

“He has a story or two to tell me later,” Hel said firmly. “For now, though, I must beg your pardon, Mr-”

“Tony,” the engineer said, gently correcting. “Just Tony.”

She smiled a bit wider. “Tony. I need a private word or several with my father.”

Loki appeared concerned, at that and looked at Tony with raised eyebrows.

Tony shrugged. “Call me if you start to miss me,” he offered, and slipped back into his bedroom, to the master bathroom, wherein he proceeded to shower, and try not to let his curiosity build to the point of bursting his skull.

 

~~

 

Hel watched him go, curious and amused. “He’s interesting.”

“That was what caught my attention, yes, but not what you’re here to discuss with me, I suspect.”

“No. That was just an added perk,” she concurred, and strolled behind the bar, pulling out a pair of glasses, and summoning a large flask from out of thin air. She opened it and poured it into each glass. “I’ll have to hear more about him later.”

Loki took a seat on one of the barstools, already getting the feeling that he would not want to be standing when he heard this. As much as he cared for his daughter, neither of them were prone to visiting between realms just to make social calls or exchange gossip. “You’re stalling,” he observed softly.

“I am,” Hel agreed, and set the drink in front of him. The glass was developing frost on its exterior. The liquid was a rich red-gold. Hel sat down beside her father as he took a sip and shivered.

“Where on earth did you get this?” he asked, sincerely surprised.

“Jotunheim.”

Loki’s eyebrows raised. “Pardon?”

“Finding out some of them are distant kin, I have made some diplomatic excursions to the place,” she said simply. “Given that I am not known to them except as ruler of Helheim––not as your daughter, or any kin to Odin––they have been courteous.”

The lie-smith laughed a bit, surprised. “Keep me apprised, now and then. I would hate to cause too much havoc while you might be in the same general vicinity.”

Hel nodded, and at last relayed her first bit of news: “I recently met with Mistress Death,” she said. “She seemed to know of you.”

Loki froze, his breath and his heart both seeming to lose track of themselves for a moment. Then he took a larger swig of the strange, icy liquor Hel had brought. “Did she speak?” he asked.

Hel shook her head. “Not in words. She made no sound, but I understood her. That seems to be a knack of hers.”

Loki nodded numbly. “It is,” he said, voice carefully even.

“She suggested that there’s something coming, from beyond the nine realms: something to do with you.”

“Of course she did,” he sighed.

Hel looked up at him. “You asked me to look and listen to the winds and whispers that all fall through my domain, for word of those gems, and that gauntlet, that once belonged to someone you fear.”

Loki did not like where this appeared to be going. “And she made reference to them?”

“Yes. As you suspected, they are not as scattered as could be hoped for, and most of them are within the nine realms now.” She hesitated. “And someone is trying to collect them.”

“Someone notably _not_ me?” Loki asked.

“That was heavily implied, yes.”

The god of mischief cursed in eight different languages, and drained his glass. “I don’t suppose there were any hints as to who this might be?”

“Someone you know, I believe. She was offended enough to consult a seer, to find out who had taken something from her.” Hel shook her head. “I could not get a fix on her beyond that memory I borrowed from the seer in question: no images, like the woman had edited herself out, as you sometimes do.”

Loki shut his eyes. “Damn.” He exhaled slowly. _Careless. Reckless._

Hel looked at him expectantly.

He scowled. “I had thought I warded myself sufficiently to prevent her noticing when I touched on her mind to borrow her form. She should not have been aware of that.” He took a deep breath. “I need to think. I need to think a great deal, and I have far less time than I thought.” He could hear the sound of great machines cracking open, crashing to the floor, critical pieces shattering: his plans and machinations halted so fast it destroyed them. Time to build something new, and clever, and fast. It was already creeping up on him: stillness, thoughtfulness, and thoughts too fast for any movement of muscle and bone to keep up with. “I thank you, Hel, and I am sorry this has troubled you.”

“May I ask what you think you’re doing, father?” she asked, just prickling sharp enough to let him know she would press much harder if she had to.

“Just the usual,” Loki sighed. “Trying to destroy a massive army, out-maneuver another god rather more powerful than I am, and keep up with the various webs of lies I’ve been weaving.” He touched her face and kissed her forehead. “Thank you, for warning me of this. There may be time for me to yet stop it.”

“I got one last impression from Mistress Death,” Hel said softly.

Loki’s eyebrows raised. “Of?”

“That she does not wish for _only_ death from the one who courts her.”

For a long moment, Loki absorbed the implications. “Interesting.”

Hel sighed. “I shall leave you to think then, before you drift away altogether.” She touched his face. “I can see that you are about to.”

He nodded. “My apologies, darling.” He smiled self-deprecating, then let his expression smooth into something gentler. “Frigga asked after you, when I last visited her. It would do well for you to see her sometime.”

The goddess hesitated, but nodded. “I will consider.” She pulled him into another embrace, which he returned as before. “Don’t get killed,” she said, and stepped away, vanishing in a whirl of deep purple smoke and an echoing crackle sound.

Loki noticed her nearly-full glass on the bar, and promptly drained it. It dulled his thoughts just enough that he gave himself five minutes before he forgot about the rest of the world. He settled on the couch just as Tony stepped out of the bedroom, fresh from the shower and back in jeans and Loki’s shirt again: unbuttoned this time.

“I thought I heard one or both of you leave,” he said simply, and then caught Loki’s expression. “Oh. Bad news.”

“Very bad,” the god of mischief agreed, shutting his eyes and letting his head drop back to rest atop the back of the couch. He sighed upon feeling Tony walk up and run fingers through his hair, but did not open his eyes. “Something has not gone at all according to plan––quite unexpectedly. I need to rebuild, and scavenge for what I might be able to reuse from the wreckage.”

“You’ll be vanishing too, then?”

Loki hesitated. “I tend to––not move or speak for hours on end when I get caught up in things like this. I can do that here, if it will not be too great a distraction to you.”

Tony smiled. “Well, you’re generally distracting, but I don’t mind. Stay, if you’re comfortable.”

“I will. Thank you.”

The engineer bent down and kissed his lips gently, the angle odd: upside-down, since Tony stood behind the couch, leaning over Loki’s increasingly still figure. “Just run some of those plans by me when they’re ready, or I’ll do something regrettable.”

“Noted.” Loki’s eyes fell open. “Once I have plans again, you’ll be the first to know.” He smiled crookedly, something about the look in his eyes reminding Tony abruptly that the god of chaos and mischief was a bit older than Christianity. He raised a hand and squeezed Tony’s wrist reassuringly, and when he let go, the engineer kissed him once more, then left, murmuring that he’d be in the lab.

Loki nodded vaguely as the noise in the back of his head returned, and the chill of the foreign liquor wore off. His eyes fixed on a point some distance ahead of him, but saw nothing. His fingers steepled thoughtfully, he let himself drown in the images, sounds and structures: repairing his plans and their machinations with all the dedication of a master craftsman.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pepper is fine with all this, Loki’s mind has a tendency to wander, and press conferences with Tony Stark are always risky affairs.

Pepper reminded herself that she had enough to worry about, with both Stark Industries as her main occupation, and dragging Tony down to earth serving as somehow both hobby and a sort of side-job. She hardly needed to worry about Tony’s newest... relationship. Somehow, applying the word “boyfriend” to Loki Lie-smith, Norse god of mischief and deception, seemed ill-fitting. It had almost seemed applicable, as something of an ironic title, when the two of them spent days at a time playing in their remote lab making things, running tests, and incidentally screwing each other’s brains out whenever the mood struck them. Loki would vanish for a few days, Pepper would ask Tony where his boyfriend went.

Of course, then Tony started getting touchy about it and Pepper realized, with mixed hysterical amusement, exasperation, and dread, that Iron Man seemed to have started feeling more than just lust for the Avengers’ very first super-villain arch-nemesis. Things had only become more confusing after that.

Culminating in this: Loki reclining in an almost meditative pose on the couch of the penthouse room wherein he had once been nearly pulverized by the Hulk. Loki seemed to be staring at some distant horizon in his own head, eyes a bit glassy, arms crossed, one folded hand at his chin so that his thumb rested on his bottom lip. His long legs were stretched out in a comfortable sprawl over the cushions. Occasionally, just infrequently enough that Pepper had at first thought her eyes were playing tricks on her, light seemed to distort around him, causing strange flickering shadows, his skin to occasionally appear blue, and the color-scheme of the couch to change from autumn to winter and back again.

Pepper stared at him for a few long minutes, until she finally convinced herself that there was nothing wrong with her eyes and that the god of mischief on the couch really _was_ messing with the lighting unconsciously. Then she sensed Tony step up beside her and hold out a drink: a French 75 with orange zest and a slice of lemon with a bit of rose sugar sprinkled on it. It was one of her favorites, and she accepted it gladly with her free hand, the other still clutching her clipboard.

“What’s he doing, exactly?” she asked, voice low.

“Plotting,” Tony muttered, with a careless shrug, though a small furrow appeared between his eyebrows. “His daughter dropped by, and apparently had some bad news.”

“How bad?”

The engineer’s mouth twisted a bit, and he looked a little more concerned. “I suppose I’ll find out soon enough.” He looked her in the eye then. “You’re alright? Happy treating you well?”

She offered him a small half-smile, determined not to glance down at the engagement ring she’d been wearing for the past three-or-so months now. “He is. Thank you. Yours?” She glanced back at Loki. “Behaving?”

“Well. He behaves about as much as I ever do,” Tony returned, smirking a little, but with a warmth she once associated with her own time with him, early on. It was good to see him happier again, even if the cause was apparently... well...

“I suppose we should talk about these papers elsewhere, then?”

Tony nodded. “I promise there’s nothing on the lab tables at the moment that might explode, this time.”

“You say that a lot,” Pepper teased. “You’re often wrong.”

He laughed a little as they stepped into the elevator.

Not long after it began taking them down, Tony said, “I asked him to marry me.”

Pepper turned her head slowly to stare at him, wide-eyed. She managed to keep her jaw from dropping, but it took a considerable effort. She then tried to open her mouth to speak, but found herself unable to make a sound, and so closed it again.

Tony chuckled quietly, looking down at his own drink. He looked nervous, but only to the very well-trained eye. “You should see your face.”

Luckily, Pepper had years of training, when it came to reading Tony Stark. “And you meant it?” she verified.

“Yes. Once I’d said it,” Tony said slowly, and cleared his throat, looking up toward the ceiling. “I didn’t know I was planning to say it out loud. It just sort of slipped, almost accidentally on purpose, when the opportunity cropped up. In Asgard. Shortly before I, uh, met his parents.” He made a face. “‘Meeting his parents’ was the most normal event of the evening, even though he’s a frost giant adopted by Odin. It was that kinda night.”

“Well,” Pepper mused. “ _Asgard_.”

“Point,” Tony conceded.

The elevator doors opened. Both of them stood and stared at the open doorway for a bit. After a moment, JARVIS inquired, _Shall I leave the doors open, then?_

“Yes, JARVIS,” they said in unison, not looking at each other. They used to spend most of their conversational time in places that were in-between, in-transit, not the starting point or the destination. Sometimes those felt like the only places they _could_ discuss really heavy subjects. Even when they’d been together, they could never bring themselves to argue, bicker, or outright fight in elevators, cars, helicopters, or even planes. Those were the places where all subjects could be viewed with a certain objectivity: safer because they were either not yet arrived at, or fading into the distance.

“You’re, uhm, okay with this?” Tony asked quietly.

Pepper wanted to say _as much as you were okay with my engagement_ , but there were too many differences. She was going to marry their mutual, dear friend. Tony had gone after _Loki_. “I’m not––I like seeing you happy, Tony,” she said quietly, with a slightly bitter half-smile. “Being crazy is something you’ve always gotten a real kick out of, though.” She shook her head. “Notice that I never tried to put a stop to all of that, even when we were, well, us.” She took a long sip of her drink.

The engineer gave a quiet, amused huff at that. “You’d tell me if you thought this was too much, though, even for me?”

She looked up and met his eye, seeing him look more grounded, more solid and more healthy than he’d been since roughly the middle of their romantic involvement: the peak before things had slowly started rolling downhill. “I would. As for what I might think...” She then glanced up, in Loki’s general direction, as though trying to see him through the floors of metal and stone. She had only conversed with Loki directly on a few occasions, but it was their last conversation that most stuck in her mind. “Well, I did talk to him about his interest in you the one time,” she mused.

Tony blinked. “What?”

“Not too long after the building collapse.” She looked a bit sheepish. “You were off in your remote playground, and he dropped by Stark Industries.”

Eyes widening a bit further, Tony cleared his throat. “Why?”

Pepper smiled a bit vaguely and shrugged, recalling the incident a bit fondly.

 

~~

 

Of all the surprises to find in her corner office, the god of lies was still one for the books, really. Pepper glanced over her shoulder, found the hall behind her mostly empty, and stepped into her office anyway, closing and locking the door behind her. “Did something happen?” she asked, her voice cool as she could make it, though a sliver of worry still threaded its way through.

Sitting in front of her desk like a prospective client, Loki offered her a thin, slightly weary smile that did not quite meet his eyes. “Well, yes, but he’s quite recovered.” He took a breath slowly. “I would like to discuss it with you, if I may.”

Pepper looked him over from head to foot, in that tastefully dark green coat and moderately ostentatious scarf that he so often wore around more normal humans than Tony Stark. She strode across the office, set down the thin stack of folders in her hands, and sat down in her chair to face him. “Should I be concerned?”

“That depends entirely on your opinion of _me_ ,” Loki replied simply. “I admit, I myself am somewhat unsure exactly how you see me, where Tony is involved.” There were a few questions implied by that statement, clear as day, but at least his tone was polite, un-accusatory, and calm. He sincerely wanted to know.

The redhead stared at him thoughtfully for a few moments. “I think you’re dangerous to most people around you, but that can be said of most people in Tony’s life, especially since the Avengers.”

“Even you?”

Pepper smiled sweetly. “I’ve survived in his vicinity this long by more than just luck, you know.”

“Clearly,” Loki said, smiling back. “You’re very astute, and you read him very well.”

Pepper blinked, a bit surprised. “I don’t think I read him better than you do, these days. He could always hide things from me, often when it really mattered.” Her brow furrowed and a small frown tugged at her lips. “The time he thought, rightly, that he was dying of Palladium poisoning comes to mind.”

Loki’s eyes flickered, showing that it took him an effort to keep that mask in place, at the thought. “I believe he’s mentioned that. It came up early in our discussions about the core of his arc reactor.”

“How goes manufacturing, by the way?”

“Well. Very near completion, actually.”

A flicker of realization lit Pepper’s expression. “Ah.” She tried, and failed, to think of a gentle way to ask some of the questions that came to mind, but soon gave up. “And what about you?”

Loki stared into her eyes for a long few moments, then dropped her gaze, his eyes downcast for a few moments. He took a slow, deep breath. “I think that this planet would be best left without me to rule it,” he said first, strangely hesitant. “It is more interesting to me at present the way that it is now. I want to decipher it, rather than rule it––and that’s because this world somehow created Tony Stark, with whom I have a still deeper fascination, and an even greater motivation to keep deciphering.” He glanced up, then, looking somehow younger than before. “If I may ask, how did you feel when you found out he might be dying?”

Pepper swallowed, thrown off a bit by that little transition. “I... felt awful,” she said simply. “I had already started to fall in love with him, even though that was before––well, before I was at all sure he felt anything more for me than he might for a sister. I felt like I had already lost him, because I was thinking about how awful it might have been if he really had died, and I hadn’t ever really let him know that I loved him as much as I did.”

The god of lies nodded, holding her gaze again. He had a cane with him, likely concealing some sort of scepter as he was often wont to use, and the hand he rested over the finely-crafted top of it fidgeted a little. “He nearly died again, three days ago.”

The redhead shut her eyes, exhaling harshly. “I had a feeling. I mean, you’re _here_.” She opened her eyes again, looking at him shrewd and focused. “You did mention that he’s fine.”

“He is,” Loki assured. “I––had a part in that, which I was not altogether clear on until very recent.” He cleared his throat. “Have you ever had an impulse to do something, and ran with it, only to later discover that you should’ve realized early on how much it really meant to you?”

Pepper raised an eyebrow, then thought a bit about a certain dress, and a certain dance, and how much being left waiting alone and seemingly forgotten had stung. “I think so,” she said. “At least, I realized what I had hoped to gain, even though at the time I thought it was just...” she hesitated.

“Impulse? Mischief, perhaps?” the lie-smith inquired.

She snorted, but looking back, that was true. “Yes. I did it to provoke, but I hadn’t thought about where I was really aiming that provocation,” she concluded.

“Neither was I,” Loki sighed running a hand through his hair. “I stole golden apples from the orchard of the goddess of youth. They have certain––life-enhancing properties, you might say. They keep Asgardians as close to immortality as we are.”

Pepper blinked at this. Her eyes then slowly widened, and she put a hand over her mouth for a few seconds. “So––I suppose you must mean how quick you and Thor recover from wounds, or is it also...” He waved a hand vaguely.

“Also physical strength, endurance, and longevity. So long as we consume one or two of them every century or so at the least, then we lead very long, long lives,” he explained quietly.

Mulling that thought over for nearly a full minute, she stared at the god in front of her and realized with a flicker of hysterical amusement that he was as stressed out as she often felt after a press conference with Tony. “Why did you think you were giving it to him, initially?”

Loki’s shoulders shifted slightly, his discomfort beyond the powers of his composure to fully control now. “I thought that it would be a waste for him to be limited to a human lifetime.” A pause. “No offense.”

Pepper snorted, but was smiling just a little. “That’s it?”

“I had not––I had not considered, at that point, that I might have thought that out of a desire to spend more than a single human lifetime in his company.” He cleared his throat quietly. “Not quite until that building fell on him, in any case.”

Now her eyebrows rose high enough that they threatened to vanish into her hair. “Wow. That’s an impressive goal.”

“Your vote of confidence is touching,” Loki deadpanned.

“No, I mean––well, you’re you. I don’t know if you’ve thought much about what it would mean: bringing Tony up to your level.” She smirked. “Y’know. On level with _the gods_ and all.”

Loki shot her an arch look.

“I only wonder what you’ll do once you get bored with him,” Pepper said flatly.

The god looked away, then, out the window. His face was a mask, but Pepper could see cracks around the edges. “I have lived a very long time, and met many immortals in that time; I’ve been captivated by some, but never quite to this extent.”

Pepper considered the weight of that: the strength in it, and the hesitation. It dawned on her, slowly, that he was concerned that Tony might somehow feel less nervous and very nearly afraid than he did. She valiantly stifled a laugh, and leaned forward over her desk a little. “You know, I’ve seen Tony captivated by a lot of things over the years,” she said. “ _Things_ ––theories, projects, and machines––not people. He loved me, but he never looked at me with that same fascination that he regarded those things.” She tilted her chin up a bit. “You’re clearly the exception.”

Loki stared at her for several seconds then, unblinking and very nearly hesitant.

Seeing that she’d struck home, Pepper smiled. “If you hurt him, I know a number of shockingly powerful people to call, just keep in mind. No offense, but he’s the closest thing to family I have, just as I am to him, so I’m obliged to make that idle threat where no one else will.”

The god of mischief smiled a small, frightfully sincere little smile. “I thank you.” He rose to his feet and reached down to pick up her hand, dropping a light-as-air kiss on the back of it. “And I will do my best, you have my word,” he all but whispered, before vanishing with a soft crack, leaving fast-fading green smoke in his wake.

 

 

~~

 

 

Looking at Tony’s face now, seeing how clearly right she’d been about their mutual afflictions in the confidence and love departments respectively, Pepper couldn’t help but chuckle. “He told me what had happened to you, and indirectly asked for advice.”

“Indirectly?” Tony’s eyebrows raised.

“Well he wasn’t about to come out and admit he had any nagging questions that he lacked answers for in front of just me, was he? I’ve had a lot of practice working out things like that with you, though. If anything, he made fewer attempts to hide his concern outright, and instead just alluded to it vaguely.”

The engineer muttered, “Yeah, he does that.” Then he added, “Concerns?”

“I think he’d been a bit more shaken than he wanted to let on, when he thought you might have died and that his gift perhaps hadn’t worked,” she said simply. “Or, at the least, it had given him a lot to think about: how I still felt about you a bit, whether his fascination with you was as mutual as he might hope, and what I thought of him. He’s had some people close to those he cared about who just never trusted him, or even hated him, I’m guessing?”

Tony nodded, thinking of Sif and a few others he’d met in Asgard: friends of Thor with nothing to offer Loki but enmity. “Yep.”

“I think I made it clear that he shouldn’t have that problem with me,” Pepper murmured. “And I’m fine with him wanting to spend a mortal lifetime or more with you, so long as you’re up for it, too.”

The engineer blinked at her word choice. “Did he... mention... ?”

“He mentioned getting the apple for you, and how he’d initially told himself it was because he thought it would be ‘a waste’ for you ‘to be limited to a human lifetime.’” She took another long sip of her drink. “He may have later mentioned realizing the full implications, and that he really wanted more time with you than the average human lifespan.” She glanced at Tony sidelong, and felt warmed just to see the awed, half-terrified little smile on his face.

“I, ah, think I’m not averse to that.”

“Well, you did ask him to marry you, and you both have impressive life expectancies these days,” she teased, bumping his shoulder with hers. “I don’t get the feeling he quite said ‘no.’”

“He’s been married before, and it didn’t turn out so well,” Tony said quietly. “But he didn’t say no. It’ll just be a long, long engagement, until we’re both a bit less afraid of––all this.” He gestured vaguely with his drink, smiling a bit brighter.

Pepper smiled. “Congratulations then. You’ve snagged yourself a god.” She raised her drink in a toast.

Tony met it, and the clink of glass seemed very loud in the elevator.

They both drained the entirety of their drinks then.

It occurred to Pepper to ask, “Do you sort of count as a god now, too, or do you have to be worshipped as one by primitive humans for that?”

“Well, the god of sex position is apparently occupied by an intimidating woman called Freja,” he sighed, sounding put out.

Pepper snorted at him and muttered something that sounded like “Shameless.”

“But Loki did come up with a different title, yeah.”

“Oh really?”

Tony hesitated, but only briefly, “God of Cunning and Inspiration,” he murmured, and stepped out of the elevator and back into his lab.

Pepper smiled after him. “I can see that.” She straightened up, no longer leaning against the wall, and followed him. “I can definitely see that.”

 

 

~~

 

 

Captain Nick Fury was a man to whom favors were an unreliable, unpredictable, yet omnipresent form of currency that could get for him what no other denomination might ever purchase. When he called in a favor owed, his debtors often regretted it. This one, however, was a repeat customer. They almost, almost had something akin to trust going for them, but not quite.

“You’re looking for evidence that a self-acclaimed god of lies might be alluding to a very real threat to the earth?” the professor inquired, his tone light and calm, an arched eyebrow the only indicator that he might have found the suggestion amusing. The rest of Charles Xavier’s expression was quite solemn.

“He’s not trustworthy, but he’s been relatively consistent with this story, and we have reason to think he would prefer to be on earth’s side rather than the enemy’s,” Fury said, with some visible reluctance.

“You dislike him.”

“He tried to wipe out the earth with an army.”

Charles considered the words, let himself sample the surface thoughts coloring them, just a little, and was surprised to find a few threads of doubt. “Did he really?”

“You saw the aftermath yourself.”

The professor nodded; he recalled the footage, and the stories surrounding it. He recalled making mental note of all the powers Fury had stated that this _Loki_ individual possessed, and wondering how they had ever caught such a creature long enough to bind him as they had. It reminded him uncomfortably of one or two times Erik had let himself be caught, and had always escaped. “You have only a name, and Loki’s word.”

“One or two hints from mythology, which I’m getting tired of,” Fury admitted. “He’s got a name that sounds awful close to something Greek: Thanatos.”

“An embodiment of death, yes,” Charles murmured, thoughtful. “The name is heavy, and there is something to the idea of it, passed from Loki to you, that I find disturbing. I will look, as well as I can. Come with me: I may need your aid to focus the search.”

Fury followed the telepath down the hall, to a concealed elevator that did not surprise him at all. Nor would it surprise him later when he couldn’t recall it, or indeed any of the time between stepping out of Xavier’s office, and stepping into the main chamber of Cerebro. He appreciated that Xavier, while generally moral enough to seem unreal, maintained a cool and practical approach to the security and privacy of those in his care. It made Fury’s job harder, but it was masterful work of a sort Fury admired, as any master thief must appreciate the art and engineering of any locks or codes he might potentially want to crack.

As Cerebro’s doors slid shut behind them, Fury was aware of being one of the only people in the very still air of the room. Xavier’s wheels were very quiet as he approached the end of the steel bridge, and began to reach for his helm.

Something shifted: the lights along the bridge and the walls flickered, though the ones on the station did not. Fury held his breath, stilled, and glanced around. There was no tell-tale addition of sound, or even airflow, so surely the god of mischief could not have teleported to Xavier’s side. He could not be here, should not. Fury reached for his gun, but Xavier held up a hand.

“He’s not truly present, and your weapons will do no good,” the professor said firmly, holding Loki’s stare unflinchingly. “Add ‘astral projection’ to his list of capabilities, however.”

The illusion smiled. “Very good, Professor Xavier. I am somewhat relieved to find that your reputation has not been unduly exaggerated.” He proffered a hand.

Xavier shook it, impressed to feel it: a trick that he could feel prickling at his nerves, played by an illusionist with centuries of experience. “You must be Loki.”

Releasing the professor’s hand, the god of mischief smiled. He wore Asgardian clothes more suited to riding and hunting than to formal events or warfare: clothes similar to the ones he’d worn long ago, when he’d followed Thor to Jotunheim. He inclined his head, just a little, in respect. “Loki Lie-smith, and sometimes-Odinson, sometimes-Laufeyson, at your service.”

Charles raised an eyebrow. _You serve yourself_ , he responded, without speaking aloud. He saw the trickster’s eyes glitter: dark and curious. “To what do I owe the honor, Mr. Lie-smith?”

“I’m glad that I caught you, let us say,” Loki replied. “You hardly have any idea what you’re getting into, looking for that name. You might draw undue attention, and those who catch his attention are seldom ever left unscathed.”

“Not even if they feign allegiance, I see,” Charles murmured, aware that Fury now stood at the threshold of the central station, the end of the bridge.

Loki’s smile widened, but still did not reach his eyes. “Well spotted.”

The professor tilted his head as he sensed Fury’s well-trained shields loosen, just enough for him to pick up the military man’s question: _Is he sincere about this threat?_ Charles considered Loki carefully, and detected no shield, but nor could he detect the god’s thoughts or feelings beyond what he could detect in the whispers of intent behind Loki’s words, expressions and gestures. The intentions he detected were self-interest, a trace of actual fear, and a sort of indirectness Charles had learned, with more than one former pickpocket and thief in his school, to associate with casual-yet-skilled forms of misdirection.

 _Answer the man, professor_ , Loki said, without moving his lips. His voice, when perceived on the astral plane, had a trace of rasping edge that his regular speaking voice lacked.

 _Intentions are vague at best, Lie-smith_ , Charles responded. _I cannot discern your honesty from it. I can hardly see you at all, beyond this illusion you’re displaying to unnerve Nick Fury._

The trickster and his illusion chuckled softly. _Very well. I will give you a glimpse of how to avoid his attention, and in doing so I’m sure you may guess why it might be so necessary to do so._ The illusion tapped at the helmet of Cerebro pointedly, in a silent command.

Charles donned it. The room felt very empty as the lights dimmed and Nick Fury stood watching the shadow of Loki in the fresh dark. Then the emptiness wherein he sensed Loki watching lifted, billowing up like a cloak caught in a sudden burst of wind. The trickster’s projection caught it deftly with one graceful hand, held his mind open only as far as he wished Charles Xavier to see.

The room seemed suddenly full of strange, arching shapes, most of which shimmered in the air around Loki, forming a latticework of protection and, with that cloak peeled back the professor could see part of it from the inside: masterfully engineered to obscure even the keenest telepath’s detection, but it was clearly designed to guard against more than telepathy: also the physical plane, and the sort of vision and power Charles recognized from encounters with one Wanda Maximoff. As a man of reason and science, magic was at once disconcerting and fascinating to him, the more he glimpsed of it, and he memorized the structures for later examination.

 _You’re a very quick study, Charles Xavier_ , said the god of mischief, his voice seeming to come from over the professor’s shoulder now. _Watch closely_.

Loki’s hands moved in the air, manipulating lines in the air that Charles hadn’t noticed before: intangible little criss-crossing threads that somehow Loki’s hands and mind tugged at, and manipulated with well-practiced ease. Charles felt a sensation of movement, and knew he had been invited in, on a limited basis. He was seeing the strange architecture of magic and mind from the interior now, though much of it was hazy, except one place, which appeared to have been damaged, and rebuilt, but there remained something tangled there which did not seem to belong here in Loki’s mind: something silvery-opalescent that tangled around a place repairs had not reached. Whatever it was clung fast, only removable by amputation of whatever it held. There were trails of memory trapped within it, and a name Charles could not discern so long as he looked at that anchor.

 _Now why, I wonder, can you not read it?_ Loki whispered. _Look closer_.

It occurred to the telepath, then, as he noticed how well-guarded, how carefully separated-off this old injury was, that the mind he was in had been navigating the astral plane for over a thousand years before his own birth. It explained the artistry and attention to detail visible in the structures of locks,  barriers, chains, and the three narrow bits of skeleton that were all that kept the injured area from being cut out of Loki’s mind like a tumor.

 _If he loses that hold, he will know I have broken it_ , the god of mischief murmured. _If I speak his name aloud––for names have the power to shape perception, magic, and matter all––he will be able to see me clearly once more. I run risk enough with the obfuscation I’ve woven into its containment. Do you see?_

The injury was an anchor, where this creature Loki truly feared kept a hold on him. Charles looked at the extent of recent repairs, as the god of mischief silently indicated the demarcation between old architecture and new. _He did great harm,_ the professor observed. _You must have lost a few things._

 _Yes_ , Loki said, his slightly-rasping internal voice managing to lack inflection.

_Is there anything more of him that you can show me?_

The god approached the anchor, and visibly examined the threads of memory that tangled in its grip. He stepped around them, found a few safer, tangential segments to pull from, and sent them Charles’ way.

_A figure with pale white-blue eyes and red skin. A landscape of void with floating islands of stone, and structures with shapes that did not quite make sense mathematically. A massive, slithering army lit by crystalline power, their voices electric and dead and skeletal as their appearance._

Last of all was the most beautiful visually, and the most disturbing. The memory was vivid enough to be more than strictly visual. It also _hurt._

_There was first feel of grit and stone under him, coating his hands. Then he was aware of the searing agony of something deeper than the physical: some of his power and control ripped out like a loose seam. His cracked ribs seemed like an afterthought, once he managed to get them back into slightly more normal positions, so that his punctured lung could start to heal itself. Black spots marred his vision as he looked up, too curious for his own good, to see why it had stopped. He wasn’t broken yet, not by far, so why had it stopped? He still had armor and shields left around his mind, he’d still been able to lie and tell that this creature called Thanos could detect less than half of his dishonesty; although that was honestly more than most anyone other than his kin could usually manage._

_There was a woman where there hadn’t been one before, standing beside the man-shaped creature with glowing white-blue eyes. She wore a long black cloak, very nearly a robe, and her eyes were white as distant stars against a winter night’s sky. She was very beautiful, as mercy and decadence are wont to seem, from a distance. She held Thanos’ gaze for a long time, and he nodded as though listening to unspoken words, and whispered replies to her now and then. Intermittently, a shadow fell over her, and all flesh and tissue would vanish, leaving only bones beneath her cloak, and a skull with star-bright and staring eyes. She was death, and she looked at Loki/me/Charles/you/us, just briefly, and smiled, then turned to look at Thanos again, and touched his face ever so gently with long fingers white as desert-bleached bone._

_“I see then,” Thanos said. “He will live, for now.” He looked hard at Loki/Charles then. “You might be of use to us, little god. What have you to say to that?”_

_The last traces of the memory came with the feeling and flavor of a bloodied, too-wide smile: so wide it actually hurt some muscles in his/their face._

Then the images faded and Charles’ eyes snapped open. Around him, Cerebro hummed with power. The lights had a strange green cast to them, like the color of burning copper salts. He looked toward the illusion of Loki, still watching him, cloak immaculately in place once more so that he seemed barely there, except for the image of a man dressed in foreign-looking clothes.

The god of mischief did not smile, but looked tired, and old, and amused in a vague sort of way, like his humor had started out as hysteria, but gotten so old it had all but worn itself out. “Do you believe me to be less of liar than my usual this time, Charles Xavier?” Loki asked.

Charles considered, recalled the quality of the pain he’d felt––he had known illusionists, some so powerful that they had accidentally destroyed the people around them without even knowing it. Loki’s examples had been raw, sincere, unedited. “I believe that there is someone coming, and that you fear him,” he said, just loud enough for Fury to hear. “Who was the woman he spoke to?”

“Mistress Death,” Loki said quietly. “She is mercy where he has none.”

The air cleared, then, and Charles glanced at Fury, realizing that to the military man far less time had passed: perhaps a mere few seconds after his question. “Captain Fury, I believe it may well be safe to say that there are much greater threats out there than the god of lies.” His eyes narrowed. “But not many.”

“Just the one, really,” Loki murmured. “For now.” He stepped away from Charles, bowed with a mock-dramatic flourish toward Captain Fury, and vanished without a sound.

“You really believe him?” Fury asked.

“Yes,” Charles replied, sympathetic, “and I also see why you do not like him.”

Fury smirked. It wasn’t often he and professor X agreed on such a matter. “So you don’t like him either, then.”

“He is... disconcerting.”

 

~~

 

Loki’s mind had always possessed a penchant for wandering. Mastering certain arts had just made it more literal that figurative. Once he dropped his illusions with Charles Xavier and left him back with Nick Fury, his attention divided itself into equal parts watchfulness––should another potential provocative watcher from earth feel a need to stare in Thanos’ general direction––careful listening, and brief visits to equally distant places. His plans mostly complete, a bit of reconnaissance could never hurt.

He wasn’t actually expecting anything he might be looking for, for the sake of said plans, to be so unsubtle as to catch his attention in such a state, but a searing prickle of sea-green caught him by surprise: loud as though it had been aimed at him. Constructing wards and cloaks as he went, until he could hardly have been seen by Odin himself, Loki crept toward the source of that familiar light.

He glimpsed trip-wires and stepped over them, careful not to let them catch on his cloaking spells. He could hear whispers, and chittering of a frightfully familiar sort: low and skeletal and electric, reminiscent of insects and bones. It was the sort of sound the Chitauri made, and the presence of the sound so near to Midgard made his skin prickle with unease.

 _Not here_ , he thought. _Not yet, not now._

Then he saw that flare of green again, heard something akin to a scream in it, and halted in his tracks.

He had been watching Midgard closely. He had spread knowledge of his goals there, but in Asgard had spoken of Thanos only to Odin, who knew better than to look for such a creature directly, with eyes of astral or physical form.

It had never occurred to him to warn anyone else from other realms. Why would it have? Loki felt his throat tighten, pulled his cloaks and his shield still tighter around himself as he wandered on.

“Show yourself!” someone shouted, female and commanding. The world turned bleak and focussed around him: he had been sensed, and spotted, though he should not have been.

 _You are not so powerful as this, Amora_ , he thought, and turned to stare at her, his magic bristling around him like a thorny briar: concealing, threatening, and unyielding. He had breached the wards of her safe-house to follow that unsubtle light of hers. She should not be able to detect him here, if those had not been able to keep him out. Not unless something was sharpening her gaze, and did not care who might be watching her.

She stared through him, around him, not quite able to get a fix. “Is it you, then, Lie-smith?” the blonde inquired, her voice low and almost sweet. “Come to tell me why you took from me?”

If he were feeling fair, the god of mischief might have acknowledged that if he himself had woken from a brief trance and sensed that something of his own thoughts and mind had been stolen, even if just the narrowest sliver, he would have done everything within his power to hunt down the thief and make their lives miserable; however, he was Loki of Asgard, and not gifted with an overabundance of sympathy. He said not a word, creeping closer, keeping just out of reach and trying to see what might be amiss. _Dear me, dear me,_ he thought mockingly, _what is the matter with the darling Amora, enchantress and outcast of Asgard?_

Amora looked unwell, seemingly chilled, some of her usual brightness and cheerful mania dimmed by something. Loki was tempted to reach out and sample whatever had shaken her so, whatever had sapped away some of the wicked mirth she was so well known for, leaving her gaunt and harrowed.

“It’s you. Silvertongue you may be, but you use silence just as deftly, don’t you? Loki Lie-smith, of the illusions, omissions, daggers and lies,” she hissed, turning toward him as though by instinct. She accidentally looked through the air right where Loki’s eyes were. “Where are you, coward?”

The god of mischief froze, stood still as a statue, his bones all lead and more immovable to him than Mjolnir, suddenly. “Oh,” he said, quieter than a whisper, scarcely more than a breath, “your eyes.” He then fell into himself, dragging his cloaks and daggers with him, keeping himself as concealed as possible given the haste of his flight. _Eyes like frost and the abyss. He found an anchor to keep an eye on me, and collect those damnable gems and-_

 Snapping back into his physical body, Loki gasped, feeling awkwardly comforting chills roll down his spine, making his skin darken to Jotun blue: a color of alarm and warning, he could not help but think. Not all of him, however, was so cold.

“Jesus!” Tony sputtered, sitting up sharply from where he’d been tucked between Loki’s side and the back of the couch. “What the- oh. Well. You look like you’ve seen... things,” he observed, looking over his lover’s face with concern.

Blinking back confusion, the god of mischief stared up at Tony. “Were you... were you asleep?”

“Maybe,” Tony conceded, shifting his legs a bit, incidentally tucking one under Loki’s knee. “Problem?”

“Not with you,” Loki murmured and let his head fall back, feeling stiff muscles in his neck and shoulders protest that he’d been too still, too unmoving for far too long. “That said, I found a number of other problems. What day is it?”

“You’ve been out about...” Tony checked his phone. “Thirty hours. So it’s tomorrow for you, I guess.” Setting his phone on the nearby coffee table, he leaned over Loki and touched the god’s face, still blue and cool under his fingers. “What were you doing toward the end? Something changed a bit, didn’t it?”

Loki nodded. “Astral projection. Reconnaissance, rather than just planning.” He let his eyes fall shut. They felt dry from hours of too little blinking. All the time spent wandering like that, bodiless and unhindered by mass, left his skin feeling foreign and peculiarly sensitive; the engineer’s fingertips felt searing hot almost to the point of pain, and deeply comforting, all at once. “I may have fled back with some haste.” He wrapped an arm around Tony’s waist, tugging him closer and shuddering a little at the temperature difference, and at the implications of what he’d just seen.

Tony let him, sprawling a bit over the god of mischief and kissing him once, not quite chaste, but not at all obscene either: warm and alluring and grounding. “Tell me your plans, then, and tell me what you saw.”

Exhausted, Loki’s head ached at the mere thought of crafting the words for it, to explain the way the world looked just a few steps outside the physical senses to other, more freeform states of being. Then his eyes fell open as a thought occurred to him: frightfully simple, dangerous, and inspiring. “I can show you what I saw. It may––it will not be comfortable.” He placed his hand on the back of Tony’s neck and smiled as he felt the engineer shiver at the cold. Then he relaxed, by tiny increments, until he rediscovered his own warmth of blood again, banishing cold and blue coloration alike.

Tony stared down at him and arched an eyebrow. “Mind tricks?”

“Mind tricks,” he agreed. “May I?” His hand on Tony’s neck shifted to touch one of the engineer’s temples. When Tony nodded, Loki closed his eyes, his mouth tightening with concentration. He had used much more power today than he should have, already. It would have been best to rest, or to rely on words, but he had shown this to a stranger already today. Pure impulse, laced with a bit of selfishness, made him want to show this man he loved, too; he wanted to know, even if it might be painful, what Tony would see in it, and how he would react to it.

The world fell away around them, until they were enveloped in shadow and dark. For a while, they were both quiet, as the god of mischief let himself be seen, and watched the look on his lover’s face as he did so, here in the place just between their minds.

“This is how you see it?” Tony asked lightly, staring transfixed at the whorls and arcs of a section of his cloak, viewed from the interior. “All of your hand-waving, that is.” He reached out to touch.

Loki let him.“Yes, for the most part.”

Under Tony’s fingers: _Silk and bone, velvet and silence, the smell of fresh snow_ ––all from a quick burst of sensation, all whispers of the ideas that were woven into the cloak. “Wow,” he breathed, grinning a wild and manic grin, full of brilliance and questions and theories, cool and blazing like the light from the arc reactor in his chest. “I need to know more about this. How much is there?”

“A lot,” Loki admitted, smiling a bit despite himself. “For now, though, I believe I promised some information.”

Tony sighed, put out to have his examination of the architecture of usually intangible magic structures cut off by such pressing matters as imminent danger.

“There’s a man called Xavier,” Loki murmured. “Very powerful, for a mortal, when it comes to telepathy.”

Then the memories began to play, and Tony could only stare, and listen to the slightly rasping whisper of Loki’s voice in his ear, answering any questions before the engineer could even part his lips to ask.

It wall, all in all, a lot for a man of science to take in.

It was also thrilling, and horrifying by turns.

“Do you ever get into my head?” he asked, as the world faded back into view around them. Only then did he notice that Loki looked even paler than usual and utterly exhausted.

“No. I don’t quite have Xavier’s skills. With an effort, I can dip into fleeting surface thoughts, but they are slippery and useful for only a few things...” He gestured vaguely toward his face. “Disguise-related, mostly.”

“That wasn’t easy for you at all, was it?” Tony mused. He recalled what Loki had shown the professor: that anchor in his head from Thanos, a permanent gap between pieces of his armor.

The god of mischief shook his head. “Your furniture is very comfortable,” he muttered vaguely. “I might spend a bit more time here.”

Tony snorted. “You’re approaching the two-day mark.”

Loki smiled a bit self-deprecatingly. “I’m not moving.” He hadn’t expected Tony to interpret this as a challenge, until the human slid from his lap to crouch beside him, fit his arms under the god of mischief’s shoulder blades and legs respectively, and lifted Loki bodily from the couch. Loki made a small noise that might’ve been less than dignified. “Tony!”

“Shut it, we’re going to bed.”

The god of mischief huffed, but didn’t struggle, instead watching Tony’s face while wearing an expression of mock-annoyance. He was distracted a bit by the sensation of being carried; it was unfamiliar.

“The inside of your head is beautiful and disturbing,” Tony said, halfway to the bedroom door.

Loki blinked at him. “That’s... unexpected.”

“I felt you oughtta know. Get the door, would you, JARVIS?”

The bedroom door opened seemingly of its own accord.

“Thanks,” Tony said, and stepped through the doorway, after which he lightly tossed Loki onto the bed, earning a somewhat cat-like noise of indignant protest from the god in response; although, by the time he settled himself into the bed as well, it was apparent all was forgiven, as Loki curled against his side with a relieved and exhausted huff, his face hidden against Tony’s neck.

“Your plans, Loki,” he reminded lightly.

“I plan to sleep,” the god of mischief muttered.

“And after that?”

“I’d considered riding you into the mattress not long after.”

Tony nodded. “I like that part of the plan. After that?”

Loki sighed. “I need a way to keep track of you.”

That gave the engineer pause. “Pardon?”

The god sat up just enough to meed his eye. “That enchantress I showed you is dangerous in ways that I would see you warded against. I need to weave something for you, either wearable or under your skin, to give you that.”

Tony considered. “I’d not mind a way to keep track of you either, you know. Maybe make that part a two-way thing?” He smiled a bit as the idea curled into something still better––so much better.

Loki caught the glint in his eye. “You have something in mind.”

“It’s something of a tradition, of an earthly sort.” He took Loki’s left hand and smiled still a little wider. “And I’m sure you can make it useful, rather than purely decorative.”

“I’m listening.”

 

 

~~

 

 

Three weeks later, Tony was still a bit high off the successfulness of that particular plan. It was enough to have him smiling near-sincerely at another rather dull press conference. He was there to show people that the brilliant mad engineer could look tame for an hour or two at a time in the presence of Stark Industries’ charming CEO; this inspired confidence in investors, apparently. It inspired little more than boredom from Tony until the very end.

Open Q&A with Tony Stark present was a lure that the media couldn’t resist, and Tony did love stirring them up. He was feeling magnanimous today, though, and really _had_ intended to behave, at first. His answers weren’t too off-the-wall or effusive or brash. He was relaxed, and well-shagged, and mellow.

Then someone decided to get a bit astute. “I have a question for Mr. Stark.”

Tony glanced up, lowered his shades enough to peer at the woman: reporter, blonde, familiar, irritating. He recalled comparing her to Sif once and smiled like a wolf. “Yes, Miss Everhart? What charming cause are you making me a villain for now?”

A few laughs at that: she wasn’t too popular with some of her peers lately, then.

“None, Mr. Stark, I only have to ask: is that an engagement ring you’re wearing?”

The whole room filled with the sounds of cameras snapping, papers rustling, and a susurrus of muttering.

Tony’s smile brightened further: fierce and gleeful and genuinely happy somewhere behind all the sharp edges. “Yes, actually, it is.”

As one, the room seemed to turn and stare at Pepper, who was feeling very glad that she had made a habit of not wearing any rings to press conferences shortly after she began dating Tony, precisely for this reason. She raised her left hand placidly, showing it to be bare. “Don’t look at me, here. I know you’ve all read the tabloids; I’m involved elsewhere.”

They swiveled back to Tony Stark, who was now leaning back in his chair, looking thoroughly smug. “It’s not Pepper.” His thumb brushed the ring: a band of gold-titanium alloy of the same sort his suit was made of. Looking closer, seams in its surface formed lines like those of celtic knots. The lines changed subtly at the top, cradling a single deep green stone Loki had fetched from some distant realm for not only it’s looks, but a few other unique properties: he could conjure the god with it, and wasn’t that a heady little power trip.

The reporters erupted in a series of sputtering questions, too many talking at once for any of it to be quite coherent.

Tony waved at them vaguely. “Quiet down a bit, I can’t answer questions I can’t hear. One at a time. You, with the GQ magazine under your notepad: your question?”

The thin young man he’d indicated looked a bit chagrinned, but maintained his poker face admirably, all things considered. “I guess I’d like to know who you’re engaged to, Mr. Stark.”

The near-immortal billionaire playboy philanthropist smiled his biggest, most disconcerting grin. “Well, I’m not so sure he’d be fine with me announcing it just yet.”

The reaction was, as he’d expected, priceless: the slight pause as people absorbed his words, then processed them, then reconsidered whether they could have possibly heard him right.

“Oh come on,” he challenged. “Recall what century this is folks, you can’t really be _that_ surprised.”

“Can you repeat what you-” someone started.

“I said that I’m not sure the man I asked to marry me would be altogether fine with my dragging him in front of the press.” Distantly he caught a flicker of green out of the corner of his eye. It took a lot of his willpower not to look at it. Instead he glanced at Pepper while people snapped pictures.

Pepper, it was clear, had spotted Loki. She sensed Tony’s stare and quickly glanced at him, then down at the press with an expression of affected boredom.

Tony smirked, smug and thrilled. “I could be wrong, though.” He then stood up calmly. “Now, if you’re all quite done getting tabloid-fodder from me, I’ll be off.” He strode toward the door calmly, aware of the sounds of journalists hurriedly abandoning their chairs. He caught a glimpse of Loki amongst his usual array of bodyguards near the door, though no one else seemed to notice him.

The press was still stumbling a bit in his wake now, and he smiled at the thought, as well as at the sight of his god of mischief. Stopping when he stood directly before Loki, Tony paused to glance back over his shoulder. “Aren’t they charming?”

“I must say,” Loki murmured. “Chaos suits you.”

The pair of smiles they engaged were fierce and affectionate.

Loki stepped closer, placing a proprietorial hand on Tony’s shoulder, incidentally showing off the twin to Tony’s ring, though his was set with a rare, naturally-occurring blood red diamond. “I take it you’re not busy for the next hour or so.”

Tony felt warmed through, already able to hear someone’s exclamation at the sight of them. He added to it, resting a hand on Loki’s lower back. “Not at all. Think you can make it to the car before getting us out your way?”

“I’ve nothing against perhaps giving them a bit of a show. They seem terribly worked up.”

The engineer laughed, and led him away, the both of them putting minimal effort in dodging cameras pointed at them as they went, though neither of them stopped to make it any easier for the photographers. There was no picture of them that didn’t have them smiling, or apparently stifling laughter, as they fled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I had fun bringing in Xavier. Once upon a time long long ago in a galaxy far far away I wrote fic for X-men. I suppose this was bound to happen, really.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which death is contemplated, and the beginning of one or two endings start to unravel. Also: Nick Fury does not like magic, but he consults Dr. Strange anyway.

Loki had not started off with any fondness for the so-called _intuitive_ magics. Seers were born, not made as mages often were, and given that he lacked that particular gift, and had never been startled out of his thoughts by sudden visions, he was not inclined to pursue an art wherein he would be inherently weaker than most other practitioners. Also, in truth, he had never been _too_ bothered by an uncertain future before: initially because those he loved seemed invincible, then later because he was cracked enough to consider their potential downfalls intriguing.

Perhaps, then, it was a sign of his recovery that he was... _afraid_ of that uncertainty now.

Arriving in Helheim for the first time in ages, he did not shield himself against the cold as he had always done before. He let it sink into his very bones, felt his skin prickle and a hum of power become tangible just under the surface of it: electric and hungry, full of strangely comfortable cold. He now knew why he had never felt _numbed_ by cold as those in Asgard often described; he felt strengthened by it, even invigorated. His clothing felt oddly stifling, partially blocking his exposure to the icy wind. If he were sans armor and cloak, he felt sure the cold would rattle through his ribcage and across his spine, like the sensation of being part of a storm.

No small wonder, he thought, that his blood-kin wore no armor into battle; it would only diminish their sense of invulnerability.

He strode along dunes of snow, tightly packed by forces of wind and the pull of strange powers to appear rippled like the disturbed surface of a pond, but they remained still, and were solid under Loki’s boots as he strode toward his daughter’s house: a dome with a few windows of light and warmth, having three large towers: one low and two high, the taller ones having wide open windows, displaying less comforting flickers of light that shared their color palette with that of bruises.

The short walk gave him time to steel his nerves, as he approached Hel’s home, and felt that strange sense that his daughter’s myriad gifts had raised her above the Aesir, above even Odin and himself, in some way. He held her opinions above others, and often allowed them to change his own. Hel was calm and far-seeing, and as soon as she left childhood behind her, she had become the first being to look straight through her father, to see though all of the lies and masks and webs of words around Loki Lie-smith, and appraise him just as he was, in that matter-of-fact way of hers. She had smiled on him, and continued to love him regardless, where his wife and so many who might have claimed his friendship or affection never could, once they had seen only a fraction as much.

He owed it to her to hide nothing, and so met her at the door to her castle wearing blue skin and eyes red as blood.

Hel stared at him, looking agitated by something––not him, she had been agitated by it before even opening the door––for a moment before her eyes widened a little, and she smiled a gentle, awestruck little smile. “Father,” she breathed, sounding relieved and a little afraid, throwing her arms around his neck. “I was just preparing to visit you,” she whispered. “I have seen things.”

Loki had never held much stock in intuitive magics, until his daughter had become one of the most talented seers he’d ever known. Her words chilled him far more than ice ever could. He stroked her hair. “Are you alright?”

“I’m just glad you are.” She pulled back enough to look at his face a little more intently and smiled, brushing her fingertips across the markings just below his cheekbones: similar to hers in texture, though not in shape. Her skin felt warm, but not furnace-like as a human’s or Aesir’s might. “Come in.”

He did so, and she closed the door behind him, pausing to watch the blue fade as he warmed back up. “Is it just temperature that does it, then?”

“It can be voluntary, now that I’m aware of it, and more practiced,” he said softly. “What did you see?”

She frowned at him. “I saw you with Mistress Death. She spoke to you, but I could not hear.”

Loki swallowed thickly, feeling distinctly less than immortal. “Did you see where it was?” He knew that _when_ was the impossible question, but if he knew where, he could be that much more prepared.

“Nowhere I recognized. I’m not sure it’s anywhere in the nine realms.”

The god of lies took a slow, deep breath, and let it out. “I may have found one of the gems. Will you help me confirm its location?”

Hel nodded. “Yes.” Her expression hardened a little. “You will be careful?”

“Inasmuch as I ever can.” He half-consciously ran his thumb over the ring he wore, felt the faint current of magic in the carefully-woven metal alloys respond reassuringly in the pattern of his lover’s distant heartbeat.

His daughter’s brow furrowed. “Don’t get killed. There are paths I do not desire to walk, and guiding your soul to some final resting place is not a duty I would find easily bearable, father.” She touched his arm, then, and smiled softly when he draped it over her shoulders. “Come. Let us find you your weapons. Perhaps we can both of us keep our skins and souls intact.”

 

~~

 

Captain Nick Fury was, he liked to think, a realistic and practical man. He had instinctively disliked the word “magic” for years before he even reached S.H.I.E.L.D. and still couldn’t keep all the contempt from his voice when he pronounced it. He was, however, a realistic and practical man, and had been at his job for a long, _long_ time now.

Magic had, at some point, become disconcertingly real. Now that they were clearly dealing with matters magical, instead of technological (the tesseract, he maintained, did _not_ fall into the “magic” category even if it _was_ made by a Norse god) he knew precisely who to consult, though he did still resent it.

“Dr. Steven Strange,” he greeted coolly.

The man standing silhouetted in the doorway straightened up and turned his head toward the director. He smiled audibly as he responded, “Well, well, Captain Fury. I suppose I should not be surprised to see you here, given what stunts this little god has pulled before.”

Fury was put a bit off balance by that, which he hated. “What do you know?”

“I know that the portal opened over New York City was opened by someone inhuman and not from this world. Out of concern for our species, I took the liberty of conjuring some of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s files on the matter, and did some of my own research. Once I found out he’s an impressively powerful mage, I knew it was only a matter of time before you would consult me.” The tall man in the doorway snapped his fingers, and the lights came up. He then stepped in and shut the door behind him. Dr. Strange was fit, looked relatively young considering he was actually in his late forties, with premature but dignified white streaks at his temples interrupting his otherwise perfectly midnight black hair. His eyes were dark, and his expression one of amusement. He liked to think that his slightly longer mustache and goatee had more elegance and regal appearance than the style worn by Tony Stark, which had become so disconcertingly popular of late.

Fury had never really got on well with Strange. Even Tony Stark at his most volatile and manipulative had never been so unmanageable, uncontainable, and damnably smug about it in a maddeningly quiet, dignified sort of way. Strange had been a consultant for S.H.I.E.L.D. for over a decade, and had been an invaluable resource often enough for them to mark him as a friendly, and even something of a superhero, but given that the man could vanish into thin air no matter where they put him, couldn’t be tracked, and often couldn’t even be found unless he wanted to be, they had never considered him a candidate for anything more. “What do you know about Loki, then?”

“He’s a gifted shape-shifter, a talented mage, and an even better liar. Given he is Aesir as well, with all of the added strength and resilience that implies, I would be not like to meet him down any dark alleys, unprepared.”

Fury didn’t bother to correct the magician; if Strange had conjured up outdated files that didn’t mention anything about Jotunn heritage, that was his own damn fault. “He’s at work on a little project.”

“Oh _yes_ , and he’s gotten louder about it now that he’d got competition. Before that, he was subtle enough to almost escape my notice.”

Fury leaned forward then. “Competition?”

“Another Aesir, rather less powerful except that she brings her lover Skurge with her and he could tear apart a city without breaking a sweat,” Strange explained, walking over to his liquor cabinet. “Might I offer you a drink?”

“No, thank you. How are they competing?”

“They are both looking to get their hands on artifacts of power that they have no right to. Furthermore, I wouldn’t trust either of them with such as this.” He tapped thoughtfully at an area near his collarbone, looking thoughtful as he poured himself a gin and tonic. “Loki, so say the rumors in certain circles of our little realm and one or two others, may have gotten his hands on one already, but I doubt it. Most likely, he’s still hunting for it; even _I_ could never track down that gem’s current owner so quickly.”

“One what?”

“They’re called the Infinity Gems. I know, what a drab sort of name: like it’s from a comic book or something.” He summoned a slice of lime from nowhere in particular, squeezed it over his glass, and dropped it in, where it then seemed to cause one or two ice cubes to spontaneously form. The magician lifted the drink to his lips and hummed, a small satisfied sound, when he tasted it. “They are the remaining parts of one of the oldest life forms in existence, though how they became imbued with the powers they currently possess remains a bit more of a mystery. There are six of them, and anyone looking to collect one or more of them should be regarded with considerable suspicion, considering all they’re responsible for.” He sat on the chair across from Fury, who sat on his couch with a couple of closed dossiers beside him.

“Go on,” Fury muttered. “I can tell you’re dying to.”

Strange smirked. “You’ve known me too long,” he said, then continued: “They were once collected by a creature from far outside our little sector of the universe, with all its little connections to other realms like Asgard and the Aesir’s nine realms, among other pantheons who have not visited us in quite some time.” He took a sip of his drink again and settled further back in his chair. “The creature who collected them was of a quite morbid sort. Stories suggest he was in love with a physical manifestation of death, and sought to woo her.” He gave a fluttering hand gesture indicative of _wooing_ , and didn’t miss the way Fury’s eye narrowed a bit at the mention of Mistress Death’s would-be consort.

“The six gems each have their own remarkable properties. The Power gem, for instance, exists as a link to all power and energy that ever has or will exist, and can boost the other gems’ effects. It also allows the user to duplicate almost any physical superhuman ability and become invincible if they’re so inclined. Take that same principle, and apply it to the Space and Time gems. Space allows the user to exist anywhere in space they desire, or even _everywhere_ if they have the power gem handy, and it provides the ability to move any object anywhere, and rearrange space itself. Time: well, I’m sure you can guess. The Mind gem boosts telepathic abilities in users who happen to have them already, and provides it to those who may normally lack it: thus the user gets access to the thoughts, dreams and psyches of anyone and everyone in existence if they’re powerful enough, or have the Power gem.” He waved a hand. “Those are the most basic of the four. The Soul gem is rather insidious, and possibly may be sentient in its own right, according to some. It can steal, control, and manipulate souls of anyone dead or living. When stealing them, they become trapped in an idyllic pocket universe at the heart of the gem. The Soul gem is the one Loki seems most intent on getting his hands on, lately. I know a few relatively laid-back demons who are already taking bets on the outcome.”

Fury’s lips thinned, as they always did when he began to sense something was about to explode and he was going to have a hell of a mess to take care of. “And the last one?”

“The last one astounds even me, and its location remains unknown to myself, and to every single creature I have ever asked about it. It controls _reality_ , all of it,  and can grant any wish, even if it goes against the usual laws which govern physics and magic alike.” Strange paused, swirling his drink and looking all too sober suddenly. “The creature who collected all of these gems at once, wishing to court death, killed two thirds of all life in the universe just by _wishing_ it.”

“His name was Thanos?”

Dr. Strange’s brow furrowed. “Yes.”

“We’ve heard of him.”

“He has a hook embedded in Loki’s mind, you know.”

Fury’s eyes narrowed. “Does he, now?” And there was the mess.

 

~~

 

There’s a critical difference between lies and careful omission; this was a fact Tony Stark knew very well. It took a really talented liar to spot when another talented liar was using that particular tactic, but Tony had made it a priority after certain experiences in a certain cave involving a man called Yinsen, to learn to spot that sort of thing. He’d be damned if someone was ever going to die for him again––now moreso than ever. Now, he had a major advantage over most of the human populace: a literal gift from the gods. _Terrible privilege_ hardly began to cover it, he tended to think, when he found himself contemplating the future, which was––given he happened to by Tony Stark––sort of his _job_.

Presuming the earth would have a future, that is. Being an Avenger made him wonder, some days, just how likely that scenario really was. Between that, and Loki’s firm conviction that there was something big coming, Tony had decided, shortly after the whole quasi-immortal idea had really started to sink in, that he would save that sort of thinking until after: after Thanos, after his and Loki’s machinations either came to fruition or ruin for the both of them, after this war was done. He had to know how much would be left of them in the aftermath, especially with Loki––whether they prevented Thanos coming, killed him when he got here, or if they somehow failed altogether in which case even near-immortality would be something of a moot point.

If he were perfectly honest, which he’s avoided on general principal since about age eleven, Tony would admit that he’d been spending a good deal of time generally worrying about the god of chaos and mischief. It’d become just another eccentric tick, just like tapping on his arc reactor when thinking, like his obsessive improvements and redesigns for his armored suit whenever he needed to calm down, or like acting on bad ideas when he’s at his wit’s end and can’t stand thinking anymore: things that have become extensions of himself like the suit has and like his fascination with Loki has. It was now another algorithm in his mental OS, always running in the background, monitoring and recording and learning.

The best lies were crafted not always with words, but often with silences and timing that even great musicians would admire: deceptive hesitation, or lack thereof. Loki had feigned loyalty, support and love for a very long time, after his heart first hardened against his brother. Loki had only half-feigned megalomaniacal madness long enough to destroy a good deal of New York and inspire Nick Fury to push the Avengers into existence as a mostly-functional team. Tony’s current concerns were with how well he now knew Loki’s pain tolerance, and Loki’s ability to hide cracks beneath that surface veneer of eerie not-quite-sanity. Those cracks could be very deep: fissures, really. Tony knew that his god of mischief was playing as cautiously as his patience would allow, trying to find any sorts of traps he could lay, or precautions to take––he even had one or two seemingly outlandish plans to wipe out the army before it arrived, but despite all he’s seen of magic, including those intriguing glimpses from the inside of Loki’s mind as to how structured and intricate it all was (in a strangely organic sort of way) Tony found it hard to believe that a few bizarre gems could have that much effect on time and space.

Though Loki had made mention of the Mind one Thanos had managed to keep hold of, and Tony had caught a glimpse of a few of those fissures, despite how oblivious Loki seemed to his own injuries there. Then again, perhaps he had gotten so used to deliberately ignoring such things that he just no longer noticed.

The strangely careless way that the god of mischief carried physical and psychological damages alike made Tony itch to see him in a real fight––not as his enemy this time. There was something about people in Asgard he’d noticed, and that was the love of a good fight that left them hurting for weeks afterward. Tony suspected it came from living in an otherwise peaceful-looking society where most everyone was pretty damn difficult to kill and lived almost forever no matter how annoying they might get. Giving one another a good thrashing that left both parties bruised and a bit bloody had to relieve some serious stress for the average Aesir. It seemed to make them temporarily forget weighty, veneer-cracking matters of pain or injury, and to strengthen their ability to cope when the forgetfulness wore off––at least in Thor’s case.

It was with that in mind that Tony determined to convince Thor to have it out with his brother. If nothing else, it would be a hell of a show.

“Look, I’ll even referee, if you’d like,” he insisted.

The god of thunder glared down at him, eyes narrowed. “You know less of this matter than you think, Tony Stark.”

It was much easier to be un-cowed by Thor even sans-armor now that Tony had started to get a feel for the full extent and limits of his own shiny new unnatural strength. It helped that he was wearing one of his gauntlets, idly repairing a bit of circuitry here and there while he sat on the couch with Thor. “Well, admittedly, I’m an only child, yeah, so the familial tension is a bit beyond me––but I did have this friend of mine who helped snap me out of a major downward spiral toward self-destruction by beating the crap out of me in my own house and flying off with one of my suits.” He shrugged. “I’m not even really suggesting you fight him, though, just maybe a spa-”

“Loki and I discussed all that required discussion not long after his return to Asgard,” Thor said coldly, his tone flat as the average frost giant after an encounter with Mjolnir.

Tony was glad of many things, not least of all that his lover was not an _average_ anything. He looked at the god of thunder sidelong, letting his face take on a cast of _So that’s the way it is, is it? I see right through you, lightning-boy._ “That sounds interesting.”

“He believes me to be a fool, and can hardly stand to converse with me for any length of time,” Thor said, as tonelessly as he could manage, but there was an edge to it, and his expression darkened with angered pride, suggesting this was nearly a direct quote, and one that had replayed in his mind a few too many times. “I cannot keep up with his intellect, perhaps, but I am hardly such an idiot as he has made plain that he believes me to be. I care for him as my brother, and I worry for him accordingly, but at this point, I sympathize somewhat, for I am not altogether fond of his company either.”

The engineer bit back a few instinctive one-liners and barbs at that. _It would help if you stopped falling for the same tricks of his every time_ was one of the top three. “Look, he’s running all around the nine realms looking for trouble, trying to be cautious a bit, but you know him better than I do: his idea of ‘cautious’ is about as unambiguous as his idea of ‘acceptable losses’ in a war,” Tony deadpanned.

Thor frowned at that and shot Tony a look of mixed offense and mild chagrin: the former because that was his brother, the latter because he was amused regardless. “What exactly are you asking of me?”

“I’m saying he’s not been starting too many fights lately. And by lately I mean since that last round in Muspelheim before work on the bridge started. That was what, last month? He’s only been on this newer project for about a week now, and we’ve got who knows how long before this invasion he’s expecting shows its face.” The machinery around his hand whirred a little as he fixed the last bit in place to activate a new sort of field-manipulator he’d been working on. With some testing, he was sure he could extend it to disrupt the sort of illusion-magic Loki had shown him so far. “I’m saying that I’m good, I mean, really good, but I’m a modern man from earth: beating my lover until we’re both bruised and bleeding is highly frowned upon in our society, especially for whoever starts the fight. You’re vikings, and that sort of cultural and psychological restraint doesn’t really seem to apply to you quite as much; you guys _need_ fights like that, in about the same way that I constantly need new engineering projects. It’s sort of a grounding point for your civility––and possibly sanity, or whatever you have that might pass for pseudo-sanity.”

“I rather think that we need them the same way that you do, these days,” Thor countered, shooting Tony a look. “No member of the Avengers lacks that enjoyment of battle.”

“I don’t lack enjoyment of it, and I won’t say it’s not addictive and thrilling and all, but I’m saying that a lot of the satisfaction I get from it is that I’m hurting people who really deserve to hurt, and don’t deserve my mercy.” He thought that over for a second. “Don’t mention that to Cap, by the way.”

“You believe my brother wants anyone’s mercy?” The god of thunder was smirking mirthlessly: the bitterest Tony had ever seen him.

“No, but seeing as I’m in love with him, it’s harder for me to get past the idea of domestic abuse when I consider starting a knock-down, drag-out fight with him,” Tony muttered. It was only a bit of a lie. He’d still been tempted to throw Loki out a window on a few occasions, but was kept in check knowing that they were both very competitive, very reckless, and not at all inclined to giving in. Until Loki managed to provoke him somewhere with a population density considerably lower than that of New York or Malibu, Tony would hold off on that particular variety of foreplay. Or until he managed to re-create Loki’s ability to teleport. (He’d managed to get an orange to vanish entirely from point A, and reappear at point B––the only problem being that it turned the fruit inside-out somehow.) “I’m working on it, though.”

Thor shot him that look of incomprehension the Avengers now all knew so well.

Tony sighed. “Remember when you went grocery shopping with Natasha and Steve after that fight with that Hydra cell?” He shot Thor a look. “Remember how you noticed people giving you really strange looks? I remember, because they decided that I should be the one to ‘tactfully’ explain to you what people thought when they saw you, a tall burly man, walking around with Natasha while she had a black eye.”

Slowly, realization dawned. “My brother would hardly be mistaken for-” He hesitated, then looked deeply disconcerted. “I do not think I want to know whether he’s been taking that form at any time of recent.”

Tony perked up a bit at that, curious. “Oh yeah, the woman thing. He’s mentioned it a bit briefly, but no, that’s not what I meant at all.”

Thor nodded. “He used to change form rather carelessly, in that regard, often to trick people in the sorts of ways Natasha seems to use at times.” He shrugged. “Or to disconcert Fandral and Volstagg. He had no compunctions about the form, but they have always seen him as my younger brother. Seeing that overlapped with his female form, when they were caught off-guard, caused them acute discomfort that Loki was infinitely amused by.”

Tony blinked a few times. “And that... stopped at some point?”

The thunder god began to look mildly uncomfortable. “He had already stopped using it too often over the past century or two. After finding out his true heritage, I’m not sure he has dared at all. There are––cultural differences between Asgardians and Jotuns that may weigh heavily on his mind.”

The engineer’s eyebrows raised, willing to drop the _please fight your brother_ train of thought for a little while, to hear more of this. “How so?”

Unable to find a sufficient excuse to flee and thus evade having to answer, the god of thunder explained, “The culture of Asgard emphasizes the differences between male and female, much like many earth cultures––that of this country particularly. Our power is tempered, designed, and very organized, in its way. The Jotuns are an older race, and have more _raw_ power. Shape shifters are far less common among Asgardians than Jotuns, and ours are often more limited. What power we have is taken from nature. Jotuns, in their way, _are_ nature. As a culture with so much raw magic, and a higher percentage of their population capable of changing shape regularly, certain of their practices define what many Asgardians consider to be distasteful or indicative of dissolute morals.”

Tony processed that by degrees. “So... Loki’s an unusually gifted shapeshifter by Asgardian standards in part _because_ he’s not exactly native?” He smirked a bit despite himself. “The reputation for promiscuity doesn’t seem to bother him.”

Thor shrugged. “It is hard to say. He is unusual for a Jotun, too; although most mages of sufficient power tend to be strange by _any_ culture’s standards, it seems. The particular––quality of even the less gifted shape-shifters among Jotuns that Asgardians have some trouble with is the fluidity and careless disregard with which they change gender. They have a reputation for loose sexual conduct on top of that, which Aesir tend to find disconcerting.” The thunder god grimaced. “Loki may or may not have gotten into a few situations in female form which deeply disturb me to recall, even more so now than when they occurred.”

“At least he never actually got pregnant with a horse.”

“No, but it has since been pointed out to me that, in the historical records concerning our war with the Jotuns, King Laufey spent a long period of time in female shape, only retaking male form not long before the last battle in Jotunheim, wherein they lost the war.” He shot Tony a look. “And whereafter my father brought Loki home with him.”

This time it was Tony’s turn for slow, culture-shock-related realization. “Oh. Well. I can see how vikings would consider that a bit odd.”

“The idea of men taking female form long enough to become mothers is one of our greater taboos, yes,” Thor replied.

That, Tony decided, would require a lot of thinking on later.

“The other main difference between my brother and others with a natural gift for shape-changing in Asgard, was that his female form was still his own. He did not frequently mimic other women; he simply changed only his masculine characteristics, but remained––well, recognizably _Loki_. I now understand quite why father never liked to hear of it or acknowledge it. It’s very common among Jotun with the same gift, but rare amongst Aesir.”

The engineer gave an amused snort at that, trying not to vividly imagine Loki as a woman. He resisted for about twenty seconds before he gave up and let his imagination run wild. He halted only himself abruptly when he caught Thor looking at him again with narrowed eyes. _Time to backtrack_. Offering a wide, disarming smile, he said, “So anyway, I think you should pester Loki with brotherly love until he punches you in the face. The resulting brawl will be good for both of you, so long as no one actually gets killed.”

Thor’s expression darkened further. “You are optimistic to think that likely. You may recall at least three incidents he has earnestly tried to kill me.”

“And here you are! Clearly, you’re well practiced at not letting him manage it.”

“You are a mad, mad creature, Tony Stark.”

“Are you really telling me that you _don’t_ want to give your brother a really good thrashing?” the engineer countered.

At that, the thunder god couldn’t help but look thoughtful.

 

 

~~

 

 

The god of mischief and lies arrived, quietly, within the halls of his father’s house in Asgard shortly after nightfall. He could hear feasting, and fanfare, and gave it a miss, instead making his way to the study near his adoptive parents’ chambers, hoping to wait them out. Instead, he found himself blessed with the good luck of discovering his mother there, writing in a journal, and the poor luck of having no time to prepare his masks and his composure beforehand. “Mother,” he said quietly, closing the door before he could give in to the cowardly urge to flee. “Good evening.”

“Loki!” She looked up at him with a smile, but it faded quickly, seeing him looking harrowed, and still blue at the edges from the cold winds of Helheim. She rose to her feet to meet him and through some masterfully subtle maneuvering, managed to settle him onto a nearby couch before he could say another word. Her hand on his face was very warm. “You look as though you’ve seen a ghost, Loki. Are you well?”

Loki smiled half-heartedly, with a touch of bitterness. “I am as well as I can be, and perhaps I have seen one: my own ghost, or a whisper of him.”

Frigga sighed lightly. “Your flair for drama will do you no good here.” She sat beside him, resting her hands over his. “Talk to me.”

“I was hoping to,” Loki murmured. “Finding the words now is proving more difficult.” He leaned a little against her shoulder, just enough to ground himself. “When the best seer you know claims they have seen you conversing with a manifestation of death, how does one go about––” he gestured vaguely with a hand. “I have run out of words,” he concluded, defeated, raising a hand to rub at his eyes.

“Did she happen to mention whether you would actually die?” Frigga whispered, squeezing his hand tightly. “I can tell you now that this is hardly the way to go about telling your mother if you expect me not to worry.”

“Death seemed implied, but not definite. Knowing all that I do, I cannot see the meeting going entirely well for me.” He tilted his head until his forehead touched Frigga’s. “I trust you to worry more effectively than all the rest of our family combined, mother. I have always trusted you, with myself and my secrets alike, more than any other here.”

“That gives me very little credit,” Frigga teased, light as she could. “Given how little you usually share with others.”

“Please do not share this.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “You are the only one I can ask this question––and the only one who trusts me enough to handle this on my own.”

“As though I could stop you. We never could.”

“If you told father, or Thor, or my-” again he cut off, shifting his fingers a little, aware of the foreign sensation of the ring he wore. As a mage, keeping his hands bare had only ever been practical: unhindered, unburdened. In past, rings had bothered him: this one, he only noticed when he required reassurance from it, which disturbed him more than he wanted to admit.

Frigga read him like a book, as she always did when his masks were in such disarray. “The man you brought to us?”

Loki huffed. “Yes.”

“And who has recently garnered immortality by dubious means.”

“Yes.”

“By your hand.”

“...Yes.”

Frigga reached up, turned his face to look him in the eye, and smiled with a mixture of sadness, pride and love. “You look well, all things considered, aside from your worrying. I had always thought love looked well on you.”

Loki held her gaze for a long moment, then smiled a sincere, broken half-smile. “Does he meet your approval, mother? He seemed rather fond of you.”

She laughed softly. “He suits you, from what I’ve seen. He’s very strong, and deserving of the gift you stole for him.”

“He... he once knew that he was dying, and concealed it from those around him,” Loki said. “The device in his chest which saved him was killing him, before he created that new core from a certain element.” He sighed. “I do not think it would go well for me to hide this from him, but nor am I certain how to tell him that I will face death––and converse with her, apparently. And that I’m not certain that she will spare me more than she already has.”

“Hel said she spoke to you?”

Loki smiled a little, that his mother still knew he trusted no other seer. It faded quickly. “Yes, but she could not hear the words.”

Frigga nodded slowly. “I see.”

“Do _you_ hear?” He looked at his mother closely. Where Hel had the gift of sight, he knew his mother to have one almost more powerful: that of prophecy.

She looked up at him, in equal parts chiding and sad. “Not that I may say, as you know. I may only act, and perhaps advise a little.” She sat up a bit straighter. “You should tell him, because he merits it, if ever he has merited your trust.” She took his hands in hers. “That said, if all men were treated according to their merits, _both_ of my sons would be in very grave trouble.”

Loki winced a little, but said nothing.

“He will only linger closer to you, and follow where you may go, if you tell him.”

The god of lies held her gaze, brow furrowing. “You’re advising me to lie.”

“I prefer honesty in almost all cases,” she clarified, “but you are my son, and I am a queen. I cannot afford to be altogether impractical or naive.”

“I have noticed, in times past,” Loki murmured, squeezing her hands in his.

“Do not tell him that Hel has seen you meet with Death, but let him know that you are worried, and that you are not invincible.”

They both jumped at the sound of a knock on the door. Loki hissed a stream of curses under his breath and Frigga smacked his shoulder for it with a warning look as the door opened.

“Mother? Father wanted to ask-” Thor leaned in and hesitated, seeing the both of them. “My apologies. I had no intention to-”

Frigga held up a hand. “It’s quite all right, Thor.” She shot Loki a questioning look.

He met it and nodded silently, whispering, “Thank you, mother.”

She squeezed his hands once more and stood. “You should greet your father, while you are here, Loki.”

“I... do not think I have the time. I must be on my way.”

“Were your plans to return to Midgard, brother?”

Loki met the gaze of the thunder god, his expression less masked than he might have liked. “No. I have work to attend to.” He stood, and smiled a little when Frigga kissed his cheek before she stepped out the door.

“Be careful, my boys: both of you.”

“We will, mother,” the replied in unison, after which they shot each other uneasy looks: Thor’s nostalgic, Loki’s mildly embarrassed. They could hear their mother’s laughter from the hall as she left.

“Are you well?” Thor inquired.

Loki considered. “No.” He rose to his feet gracefully and pulled his composure together again. “Are you?”

“I am, though I worry for you somewhat.”

The god of lies dropped his gaze, shaking his head, and offered only a bitter smile that did not reach his eyes.

“Brother.”

Loki looked up at him.

“When you return to Midgard, perhaps we may meet here first.”

Loki raised an eyebrow. “Why would I wish to do that?”

“We might take the bifrost. It does tend to land us in open, mostly-uninhabited areas. Perhaps we might make the most of that, and spar.”

The god of mischief looked at his adoptive brother as though Thor had grown a second head, but the longer he thought about it, the more strangely appealing the idea was. If his planned theft of the soul gem went smoothly, it would require little or no physical brawling––merely the right spells, the right timing, and a bit of rushing about very quickly. The idea of getting his blood moving, launching himself into an endeavor requiring more muscle-memory than pure objective reason, was very appealing; he now and then needed a visceral reminder that he was alive, and strong enough to knock the wielder of Mjolnir on his ass. Also, he would be doing physical harm to Thor, which was always a bonus. His expression smoothed into thoughtfulness and he folded his arms behind his back. “Perhaps I will. Expect my return in two days’ time.” With that, he vanished.

Thor blinked at the green smoke as it cleared and found himself starting to smile.

 

~~

 

In the suit, flying at full speed from Miami to Malibu, it took a lot to distract Tony from things like how awesome his suit was, how fast he was going, and all the thrills that came with it. Loud alerts across his display going off, telling him in bright flashing text that an unusual meteorological/astrophysical event rather like an Einstein-Rosen bridge had been detected about twenty miles away, was sufficient to do the job, though.

“JARVIS, compare readings with those in S.H.I.E.L.D. files on Thor Odinson, won’t you?” he said, and abruptly changed direction. “Also, text Pepper and let her know I may be late.”

“Right away, sir.”

He slowed down, struggling a bit with the considerable weather-based obstacles––near-immortal or no, flying around in a big metal suit in the middle of a thunderstorm just never sounded like a great idea––and flew in low, just in time for an explosion of dust and gravel to erupt from where readings suggested the event had occurred. Tony paused, started scanning.

“Two lifeforms, sir. Signatures match one Thor Odinson, and Loki Lie-smith.”

“I had a feeling,” Tony muttered, smiling as another few dust clouds erupted in rapid succession. “I also get the feeling they should have a bit of time to work that off before I get there.”

“That’s polite of you.”

“They’re both capable of crushing my head in if they felt like it,” Tony reminded.

“Of course, sir,” JARVIS responded, “because you are, of course, a paragon of rational self-preservation.”

Tony snorted. “Sarcastic bastard.” He swooped low, then landed neatly about half a mile from the battleground. It was only about ten minutes’ walk, but as the clashing gods weren’t apparently holding back, it didn’t seem this would be one of their longer fights. Tony found a nice rocky outcropping with an overview of the battlefield and settled in to watch, taking advantage of his display’s zoom capabilities.

With storm clouds overhead at midday, lit by occasional flashes of lighting––though Thor seemed to have set aside Mjolnir and his cape, while Loki had set aside his long coat and the many knives and other weapons he might keep therein––Tony couldn’t help but think this scene should’ve had a professional film crew around. As it was, he made sure JARVIS was recording for posterity.

Loki was magnificent to watch. He knew his brother’s weaknesses and limitations, and was quicker, but it was clear that he was still at a slight disadvantage in sheer physical strength. When Thor did hit him, Tony could tell it wasn’t a love-tap, just as it wasn’t when Thor missed the next time, and Loki kicked him in the neck. Only now and then did it seem to occur to Loki to use an illusion or two: he was too focused on getting in what hits he could, too lost in it. Thor flung him hard into a rocky outcropping, rattling the stones, and Loki only wheezed a laugh and grinned with blood smearing his teeth.

Tony inhaled sharply at the sight of it. It reminded him of a mad grin, broken ribs, the sensation of dirt under his hands, but there was no hysterical edge to it this time: just Loki, twisted and broken and mad to this extent, as he’d been even _before_ he fell into the abyss, grinning at the taste of his own blood and the pain in his bones before vanishing and launching himself back into the brawl.

The god of thunder knew his brother almost as well as his brother knew him, and maybe he really was starting to learn a few things. He swiped at an illusion and before it had even half-vanished he swung his elbow back and caught Loki in the jaw with it before the god of mischief got close enough to get him into a headlock. A ragged laugh followed, even as Loki punched his adoptive brother hard in one of his kidneys in response. “Well done,” he bit out, then darted back as Thor rounded on him.

Tony found himself wishing he had brought popcorn.

As the snarling exchange of blows died down, Thor at last ended it, hurling Loki down and pressing his boot against his brother’s throat. “Do you cede?”

The god of mischief stared up at him thoughtfully, seriously considering his answer, but eventually nodded, grinning again as he caught his breath. “For now, I cede.”

Thor removed his boot, and held out his hand.

Loki sat up, looking at him in a half-suspicious half-exasperated manner, but eventually took the proffered hand, letting the god of thunder pull him back to his feet.

“That was good,” Thor panted. “You’re stronger than I recall.” He rolled one of his shoulders gingerly, and it made a couple of unpleasant cracking sounds.

Loki nodded. “You’re getting quicker in a couple of places,” he admitted, rubbing at his bruised jaw. He gestured to sumon his coat from the rock he’d left it draped over, and shrugged back into it. “We should do this more often.” He wouldn’t come any closer to admitting he might’ve missed this.

Thor grinned broadly regardless, with just a hint of something a bit more bloodthirsty than his adoptive brother remembered: not a bully’s desire to inflict damage, but a slightly bitter desire to get some of his own back. “Yes, we should.”

The god of mischief blinked at his brother curiously. Maybe it was something he would have to wait out, slow as erosion: his brother gaining something akin to depth. He was distracted by a loud whistle from about a dozen yards away. He turned his head and smiled brightly before he could stop himself.

“If you two are done with your twisted form of familial bonding,” Tony called, “I can reassure Erik Selvig that Thor’s delayed return after that burst of energy from the bi-frost isn’t due to his imminent death or something. He keeps calling me, since Fury got tired of it and told him I was in the area.”

Loki and Thor exchanged glances. After a long moment, the god of mischief patted his brother hard on his injured shoulder. “Off you go then, Thor.”

The god of thunder grimaced and poked at his face before Loki could quite get out of reach, and laughed when Loki cursed at him. “Fare you well, brother.” He stepped back before Loki could launch anything at him and summoned his hammer, spinning it a few times before launching himself skyward.

Glaring up at the clouds with an only half-hearted sneer, Loki shook his head. “Some things really are eternal, one must suppose.”

Tony landed beside him, kicking up only minimal dust. His faceplate retracted soon after. “Feel better, darling?”

Loki turned his head, smiling a bit to find himself eye to eye with his lover, thanks to the armor. “I do, to some extent.” He pressed in close, one hand at the back of Tony’s neck and kissed him, slow and hungry with just the slightest edge of violence. He pulled back and rested his forehead against Tony’s breathing him in for a moment and trying very hard not to think about facing death anytime soon.

Tony watched his expression, the flickering under the god of mischief’s closed eyelids for those few moments. “Good to have you back. Any luck?”

“Oh yes.” He pulled a dark green gemstone about the size of a large quail-egg from somewhere in his coat. “Not the one I’d prefer, but useful nonetheless.” He then tucked away again.

Tony curled an arm around him. “Show me later. If you can get us to Malibu your way, we’ll have almost an hour before Pepper comes after my head.”

Loki hummed, still not opening his eyes, and draped his arms over Tony’s heavily armored shoulders. “You do have a very spacious shower at the Malibu place.”

“My thoughts exactly.” He brushed his lips against Loki’s again, gently this time, and licked away a bit of blood there. “Shall we?”

The god of mischief opened his eyes stared at Tony with an oddly tender sort of expression, and murmured. “Yes.”

The pair then vanished, leaving only a few damaged rocks and desert dust behind them.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I sooo thought about skipping ahead a little and making this a much more wrenching cliff-hanger, but didn't. I've got some fun planned for the next instalment, though.
> 
> Also, sheer impatience got to me and I didn't proofread too close, for which I apologise. I'll be correcting it after I can focus on something other than the next instalment, the ideas for which are not plot-bunnies so much as plot-sharks, and this last section of Practical Villainy is the blood in the water.


End file.
